From archive (archive)
Subject: A STUDY IN SORCERY by Michael Kurland
From: ecl@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: 17 Jul 89 23:24:10 GMT




		    A STUDY IN SORCERY by Michael Kurland
		    Ace, 1989, ISBN 0-441-79092-5, $3.50.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1989 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This book continues Michael Kurland's continuation of Randall Garrett's
Lord Darcy series.  Garrett wrote TOO MANY MAGICIANS, LORD DARCY
INVESTIGATES, and MURDER AND MAGIC, all set in a Britain where Richard I was
not killed in the Crusades, the Plantagenets still rule, and magic works
(all technological advances are done through magic).  After his death
Michael Kurland continued the series with TEN LITTLE WIZARDS and now A STUDY
IN SORCERY.  Darcy had always been patterned somewhat on Sherlock Holmes;
this latest title merely emphasizes it.  There is less of the historical
explication in this novel than previously, probably because Kurland assumes
that by now the people who are reading these know the alternate history and
don't need it recounted to them.  The mystery is fairly mundane, there's the
usual court intrigue, and perhaps the whole series is starting to run down.
A STUDY IN SORCERY is enjoyable enough for an evening's entertainment, but
nothing new or original.  If you haven't read the previous books in the
series, don't start with this one; if you have, you'll know whether you'd
enjoy this one anyway.

     (One interesting thing to note is that the covers of the series have
changed over the years.  The first, at least in the edition I have, was
strictly a modern--for the time--science fiction type cover, the second
seemed to be a black magic cover, the third, a Gothic romance cover.  This
one is a humorous cover with Victorian-costumed characters.  What next?)

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 201-957-2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com