Magic and religion

I've just started reading (listening to) a book, Deryni Rising, that Mike was kind enough to download and burn to CD for me from Audible.com. I'm especially happy to get this book, which I first read years ago, because I love it but it's now too hard for me to read in print.

The book is the first in a trilogy by Katherine Kurtz, one of a number of series of fantasy books about magic and religion. The two main characters of this trilogy are Duke Alaric Morgan, Lord General of the Royal Armies, and his cousin Monsignor Duncan McLain, a priest of the Holy Church of Gwynedd, both Deryni - people genetically capable of practicing magic. Much of the trilogy has to do with the conflict between the Church and the Deryni, as they're considered by the Church to be evil, though many of them have hidden their Deryni-ness and become members of the Church hierarchy. By the end of the trilogy, the Church actually begins to reconsider its stance ..... they don't call it fantasy for nothing :)

Here's a little about Deryni Rising from Wikipedia ....

"The novel is set in the land of Gwynedd, one of the fictional Eleven Kingdoms. Gwynedd itself is a medieval kingdom similar to the British Isles of the 12th century, with a powerful Holy Church (based on the Roman Catholic Church), and a feudal government ruled by a hereditary monarchy. The population of Gwynedd includes both humans and Deryni, a race of people with inherent psychic and magical abilities who have been shunned and persecuted for centuries. The book takes place almost entirely within Gwynedd's capital city of Rhemuth, and deals primarily with the struggle of young Prince Kelson Haldane to secure his throne from the machinations of a Deryni usurper."

I'd recommend the trilogy, as well as Kurtz's second series about the same world, set a bit earlier in time, The Legends of Camber of Culdi.