THE WOMAN OF WYRRD: The Arousal of the Inner Fire

Latest entry in Andrews' (Windhorse Woman, etc.) starry-eyed, mind-melting, seemingly endless neo-Castanedan New-Age Bildungsroman Here, Andrews is yanked into the past via a transtemporal umbilical cord while under the tutelage of Agnes Whistling Elk and other members of the Sisters of the Shield, the woman's shaman-and-sewing circle familiar to readers of Andrews' earlier fantasies (""this is a book of magical teachings, not an anthropological study,"" she counsels any readers blind to the glaringly obvious). By visiting the ""Dreamtime""--which has almost nothing in common with the Australian aboriginal concept of the same name--Andrews inhabits the body of Catherine, a teen-age girl in medieval England. There she learns the ""Way of Wyrrd"" from a Yodo-like ""Godmother."" Anddrews discovers that pain is a mental illusion, intuits the language of the plant kingdom, walks on thin air, enjoys telepathy and astral projection. During a bout of magical sex with hunky spirit-man Charles of Glastonbury (""my knees went weak as I gazed into his eyes""), Andrews feels ""the surge of the universe around us."" Alas, she and Charles will never marry--theirs is a higher destiny--but the Way of Wyrrd remains for all true seekers (why, even Jesus was ""a great magician of Wyrrd""). Fast-paced, sometimes knee-slapping gothic-and-goddess pulp.