Young Sybel, the heiress of powerful wizards, needs the company of no one outside her gates. In her exquisite stone mansion, she is attended by exotic, magical beasts: Riddle-master Cyrin the boar; the treasure-starved dragon Gyld; Gules the Lyon, tawny master of the Southern Deserts; Ter, the fiercely vengeful falcon; Moriah, feline Lady of the Night. Sybel only lacks the mysterious Liralen, which continues to elude her most powerful enchantments.
But when a soldier bearing an infant arrives, Sybel discovers that the world of man and magic is full of both love and deceit-and the possibility of more power than she can possibly imagine.
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[THE WIZARD HEALD coupled with a poor woman once, in the king's city of Mondor, and she bore a son with one green eye and one black eye]***
(Tachyon Publications, 15 September 2017 (first published 1974), ARC provided by the publisher and voluntarily reviewed)
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I really wanted to enjoy this book, judging by the blurb alone it should have ticked all the boxes for me.
Unfortunately, large chunks of it just didn't work.
For some reason I felt really detached from the book. There is coldness, an aloofness in the writing and characterisation that left me cold.
When I read a book, I want to get behind the characters and feel connected to their world and their plight - regardless of the genre. The magic never happened with the book. I felt like I was constantly being pushed back and as a result I felt no connection to the characters. I couldn't care less what happened.
There are things that worked really well.
I loved the concept of the novel, of Sybel being able to draw mythical creatures to her. The world building is epic, I could visualise everything with precision. The author's writing is rich and lush at times.
Unfortunately, the book didn't completely work for me because of the cold, rigid tone created at times. This tone did fit the events in the novel but created disconnect between myself and the book.
I would read other books by the author though because a lot of things did work.
