THE EARTH GODDESS

by Richard Herley ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 1986

Final volume in a Late Stone Age trilogy (The Pagans) set in England in 3000 B.C. In The Stone Arrow, young Tagart had his nomadic hunting tribe wiped out from under him by an agricultural commune. The rest was vengeance, as Tagart wreaked carnage, setting trap after trap for his enemies, until he was captured by men of the Flint Lord and forced to work in the mines. In The Flint Lord (1985), Tagart put together a savage band of leftover warriors and attacked the main fort of the fifth Flint Lord, Brennis Gehan. The Flint Lord survived, however and--as the present novel begins--is in hot water with Lord Heite in Europe, head of the Red Order of priests of the Earth Goddess, who sees Brennis as a treacherous thief and murderer. General Kasha Teshe is sent to kill and replace Brennis with his illegitimate six-year-old son (by his sister), with Teshe as the child's protector and real ruler of the island country of pagans. Though Brennis is murdered, his consort Lady Altheme escapes to the forest with her son Paoul, Brennis' remarkably beautiful, rightful inheritor rather than his incestuous son, the sickly, unstable Hothen. Paoul thinks Tagart is his father, but when Tagart is murdered, the orphaned Paoul is sold into the priesthood and sent to Lord Heite's great citadel on the mainland for schooling. This is the most compelling part of the novel, with a hint of Hesse' The Glass Bead Game, in which Paoul shows a genius for symbolic interpretation of the holy song cycles and is in every way a superior student. After being made a priest, he returns to his home village in England, where he becomes his crazy half-brother Hothen's tutor and sees Hothen's bride-to-be Yseld as the very Earth Goddess herself. She feels much the same about him. Equally bad, he finds the priesthood a tatter of shams. When Yseld comes to a tragic end, Paoul decides that the real enemy in his life is the false Earth Mother at the heart of the priesthood and that she must be destroyed from within. Unless there is a fourth volume, The Pagans more or less collapses at the close of The Earth Goddess, nor is the richness of Herley's Earth Goddess theme fully mined. Even so, this is not a novel that insults the reader with glib action scenes, and its sense of daily household detail is a steady delight. Commendable.

Pub Date: June 19, 1986

ISBN: 0000824194

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION