Nicely tongue-in-cheek -- until it gets Very Dark -- fantasy/romance, much in the style of Georgette Heyer's Regency romances, though the underlying McGuffin is rather nasty.
Kyra the Red would be very typically a Georgette Heyer type heroine -- impetuous, tall, a bit physically clumsy, unrecognising of her own idiosyncratic beauty, unwed at an unfashionably late age -- who has the added misfortune to be a wizard.
A wizard, in a world in which the Church begrudgingly allows one wizards' order to exist, with the proviso that the wizards may not use their magic to affect the world outside their walls. To use unauthorised magic is an automatic sentence of death.
And Kyra has come home for her younger sister's wedding; home, where she knows she is not welcome in her father's house.
Home, where she quickly discovers that someone else is trying to steal away the groom, using illicit purchased magic.
Home, where she cleverly and subtly uses her forbidden powers to stall or prevent the wedding. (The mice are a particularly good touch, and Don Maitz's typically lyrical cover refers masterfully to that sequence.)
Home, where her prophetic dreams have told her that a curse decrees that her sister's marriage bed will be her deathbed.
Home, where she finds herself, uncomfortably, increasingly attracted to her sister's betrothed... who seems (after he gets over thinking her somewhat addled) to return her regard...
There can be little doubt that Hambly had Georgette Heyer in mind when writing this -- compare it to, oh, "The Grand Sophy" or "The Masqueraders" -- and i do not think that Heyer would have felt offended by this tribute. |
Georgette? Is That You?
