The Prince of Morning Bells
by Nancy Kress
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted October 15, 2026
The first novel by Nancy Kress, which was published in 1981, is not in print at this time. No listing at Bookshop, and Amazon shows only one copy from a third-party seller, but no telling how long that might be available. I searched eBay and bookfinder.com, and might have bought one of the listings if I hadn't also done a general search, which led me to the Internet Archive, which is the group behind the Wayback Machine. They offer an app called Open Library that I was able to download to my Kindle, but it can be accessed online as well. They also offer audio books (not this title though), along with some movies, TV, music, software, etc. You have to create an account to access anything, which is free, but you can't keep it, you have to return it when you are finished. It is not in e-book format, but rather a digital scan of the paperback. Not ideal, since I wasn't able to enlarge it much, but enough to be readable. I liked it much more than I expected, so it is possible I will buy a used copy at some point, or maybe it will come back in print due to her new stature in the field, but I would prefer an e-book.
In addition to Kress being a fan of and writer of science fiction, I am sure she also read plenty of fantasy. There have been a lot of re-tellings of classic fantasy over the years, many in just the past few decades, but I feel sure this is fairly original, with a more modern approach. It has a lot of humor, as well as satire, most evident in real historical events and people incongruously inserted into the otherwise fantasy narrative. For instance: a talking bat who speaks about Hitler? A few years ago I read several books by that year's Grand Master, Robin McKinley, and she was the first I thought of that was similar to Kress's approach. I also thought of someone else later, and the author cited the influence in her afterword: Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn. It wasn't until I finished the book, then looked for a book cover image to use here, that I saw the blurb above the title mentioning the Last Unicorn comparison. That is not to say it is in any way a copy or homage of Beagle's work, just the lyrical style was similar. More recent stories of similar nature include several by Theodora Goss and Alix E. Harrow (and I'm sure many, many others). I'll go out on a limb here and say Kress's tale is at least the equal of any of the others I've mentioned. I had never heard of it until I searched for her books to read, and am surprised the only award recognition it received was a Locus nomination for First Novel. It came in sixth place then, and that was when those awards were restricted to subscribers of the magazine.
Kirila is an only child, eighteen years old, a princess in the Kingdom of Kiril. Instead of going to her parents, the King and Queen, she visits her Wizard for advice, which leads her to decide to go on a quest, the purpose of which is to find the Heart of the World. The Wizard sends a talking bat with her, but that doesn't last long, since the bat is run off (maybe killed?) by a talking dog, Chessie, who claims to be an enchanted prince. He wants to accompany Kirila on her quest, since he wants to be disenchanted, and believes the Heart of the World will be found in the Tents of Omnium. Neither really know where they are going, only having vague directions from the Wizard, along with a limited map of the area. Kirila is sidetracked several times because she thinks various people she meets might have a few answers to help guide her quest. One of those places is The Hold, where Quirks study the ancient manuscripts, trying to verify the different flavors of existence, of which they think there are only four: up, down, strange, and charm. They get very upset when Kirila finds a scroll that implies top and bottom to also be part of the nature of the universe, which had been suggested by Prince Lepton. Another stop along the way is the village of Rhour, where everyone is obsessed with tales of the Lielthien, who were perhaps the first men. Next, Kirila encounters a handsome knight, Prince Larek of Talatour. Those two things, knight and handsome, are the only points in his favor, but Kirila is enchanted by him. Chessie is not, and continually pleads for Kirila to continue the quest, but that is not to be. Part One of the story ends with Kirila marrying Larek, and Chessie leaving her.
Chessie does return to her, and being enchanted he has not aged, but Kirila has. She was twenty when she married Larek, but now forty-seven, a mother to Prince Laril and Princess Dorima, and it is nearing Dorima's wedding day. I'll skip over the part that would explain where she is when Chessie returns, but she is finally ready to resume her quest. Chessie claims to have found the Tents of Omnium, but he had not been able to enter. He hopes Kirila will be accepted there. Another long journey, which almost ends in defeat in the dense forest surrounding the Heart of the World, but they persevere and get to the other side of the forest, into the clearing around Omnium. The guardians there allow Kirila to enter. Again, I won't elaborate on what unfolds, but a hint would be a suggestion that the book's title could have been The Prince of Mourning Bells. This is hardly the first book or other type of story that made me think of these lines from T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets":
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
If you want to find the Heart of the World, look within. However you are able to access this book, used paperback or the Archive, or if you're lucky to find it at your library, do so. I loved it, and recommend it highly.
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