Deryni Checkmate

The book I'm reading now is the second in a fantasy trilogy (Chronicles of the Deryni) by Katherine Kurtz, titled Deryni Checkmate. What I especially like about the series is the interweaving of magic and Catholicism - most fantasy books include magic but few try to create a world in which that magic has to face and come to terms with Christianity (and vice versa). As I mentioned when posting about the first book in the trilogy, the story takes place ....

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 physic and magical abilities who have been shunned and persecuted for centuries.

In this second book of the series, the two main characters, the openly Deryni Duke of Corwyn, Alaric Morgan and his cousin Monsignor Duncan McLain have run afoul of the Church for using their magic powers to help the young king secure his throne - Duncan is suspended from his duties as a priest, Alaric's duchy is (almost) placed under interdict, and both are excommunicated, made anathema, and barely escape being burned at the stake as heretics.

Creepy to think that in real life our church used to cut off whole geographical areas from the solace of the church in order to influence rulers (interdict), made people anathema, auto de fé-ed them ... yikes!

But anyway, in the novel most of the church hierarchy are good and true and eventually come around to the opinion that the practice of magic is morally neutral - Alaric and Duncan are de-excommunicated and can then turn their attention to the worries of the third book in the series, a war about to be waged against their kingdom by a neighboring evil sorcerer.

I'm so glad this series has been made into an audio version. Many older fantasy and science fiction books are mostly lost to me now that it's so hard to read normal sized print. New books are almost always made into audio CDs as well as print books, but older genre books never seem to be remade in audio form - thanks Audible :)