Carolyn Kephart: Lord Brother

Sterling House (Trade Paperback), ISBN: 1-65315-277-0

If it seems like I’m tiptoeing around this review, it could be because I am — and not because I didn’t like the book. I liked it a lot.

However, reviewing this book puts me in a quandary — or on the horns of a dilemma, depending on your taste in clichés. I can’t provide any concrete plot references for Lord Brother, the second installment in the fine fantasy series begun with Kephart’s Wysard, without throwing out spoilers left and right. And be warned, reading Lord Brother without first reading Wysard will cause you to shake your head and mutter, “I don’t understand this at all.”

The book (both parts) deserves a better response because this multi-layered, engrossing, well-written fantasy presents a unique world, with a polytheistic society not based on any mythology now extant. I think I can only give a glimpse of that world and only do it by sticking to the information contained on the back blurb.

The protagonist, Ryel Miral, Lord Adept, fully versed in his Art (magic) searches for a lost spell to rejoin the body and spirit of his instructor, Edris, and bring him back to life. Michael Essern, a devotee of the daimon Degas, thwarts Ryel at every turn. Degas seeks to return to the world in Ryel’s body and plunge the World into unending torment. seams.

Kephart weaves a vivid but marvelously complicated tapestry of actions and interactions, of magic and malice, and of heroes and helpers. But before I give it a wholehearted recommendation, I must add that I hated the font used for the body copy. It made my eyes ache because (possibly because of my bifocals) it seemed to move. I could read it for only a short time — and that irritated me no end, because I loved the story.

Patricia Lucas White

Patricia Lucas White’s latest historical novel, To Last a Lifetime, was an Eppie finalist for 2003. To Last a Lifetime and two of her fantasy romances, the Sapphire Award-winning A Wizard Scorned and The Godmother Sanction, can be ordered through Hard Shell Word Factory. Her recent contemporary, PS, I’ve Taken a Lover, is available from Lionhearted Books.