Katherine Kurtz

I've been going back to classic fantasy books. I missed this one when it came out, but it's the first of the Deryni series, first published in 1970.
It occurs in Gwynedd, where King Brion rules as leader of one of the Eleven Kingdoms. Brion is human but has powers bequeathed to him by the Deryni, a race of people with magic and psychic powers now persecuted by the Church. His general is Alaric Morgan, a half-Deryni who has been training the heir, Prince Kelson. A Deryni sorceress named Charissa assassinates Brion, but rumors paint Morgan as the killer.
This is epic high fantasy roughly based on Welsh legends and history. This book has spawned fifteen books that take place in this world, though this one can be read as a complete story. The world-building is fascinating and involved, with political machinations in both the court and church taking place among murders and magic. It's more YA fantasy than Game of Thrones, but a very satisfying introduction to a spellbinding world and characters that I will be reading more about.… (mer)

I ended up with this book along with a number of others from a relative's collection.
From the description, I was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a let down. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it was definitely not what I got.
I suppose I anticipated a bit more of the 'mystic detective' trope, ala Carnacki or so many other examples from weird and pulp fiction. And that's certainly present in a way...but there is an awful lot of almost Victorian/Romantic-esque nobility/rich person stuff here. Much like a lot of classic literature from that era, I find it a little off-putting. Its hard to feel sympathetic to or identify with people so wealthy they have no actual responsibilities or demands on their time. Even artists who benefit from their patronage (which are present here) feel similar to me. Combined with the fact that we get *VERY LIMITED* magic or mystical secret society action until about the last 50 pages of this book. In fact, there's very little action of any kind til that point. Until then, there's a lot meandering not really training, not really teaching, a new protege...a lot of description of rich people's homes and cars and oh so important activities, a *little* investigation...and that's about it. There's also some really heavy christian overtones to the magic, which I wasn't anticipating, but the author goes out of their way to let us know it doesn't *have* to be that way. Unless someone tells me the subsequent books have a pretty hard shift in tone and pacing, I'm out for the rest of the series.… (mer)