| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: None Violence level: Medium Back Cover: “A sweeping tale of romance and sorcery set in the imaginary kingdom of Gwynedd—where the mysterious forces of magic and the superior power of the Church combine to challenge the rule of young Kelson, who came to the throne when his father was brutally murdered by the sorceress Charissa. The fate of the Deryni—a quasi-mortal race of sorcerers—and, indeed, the fate of the Eleven Kingdoms rest on Kelson's ability to quash the rebellion by fair means or foul—even by the proscribed use of magic!” |
But sorry, I meant to review the book, not the back cover. I'm just saying, don't judge the book by it.
When I first discovered this series (after I finally stopped judging it by its cover), I was wholly engrossed by it for over a month, to the point that I didn't want to read anything else. And this in spite of the occasional plot hole and the rather cliched rhyming spells. I just really enjoyed spending time with these characters.
Katherine Kurtz's world-building skills are excellent. You can tell that she has a fair grounding in history, and has based her fantasy world in a close mirror to our own medieval Europe. Her descriptions of the Church are especially detailed and show a great reverence for the real-life religion while disapproving the corruption sometimes found in the organization. Also, she uses enough ecclesiastical Latin and proper heraldry (not just slapping an animal of one color onto a field of another color), that I started learning about them myself (in self-defense).
I'm also rather impressed by her managing to get a fair-length novel out of a story where most of the narrative time covers no more than two days.