Continuing her fictional tub-thumping on behalf of ancient goddess religions vanquished by male-dominated cults, erstwhile science-fiction author Bradley moves her campaign from the seventh- century Britain of her bestselling Mists of Avalon (1982) back to the first century, the time of Roman occupation. Here, a Druidic priestess-in-the-pod and a Roman officer fall in love—with the predictable miseries, rebellions and upheavals, intra-Druidical conflicts, and mystical communions. (Sometimes out of body, priestess-wise, is the way to go.) The handsome young Roman Gaius Marcellius (whose mother came from a native British tribe) literally stumbles into acquaintance with the family of the Druid Bendeigid, son of the Arch-Druid Ardanos when the Roman falls into a bear pit. He is rescued by Bendeigid's foster son (later, a firebrand avenger opposed to Druidic negotiation with the Romans) and Eilan, his daughter, the spitting image of her aunt Dieda (this will come in handy later). Eilan and Gaius fall in love, but marriage is immediately rejected by Druid and Roman fathers. Gaius will marry unhappily, while Eilan is taken into the ``Forest House'' of the priestess of the Great Goddess. After secretly giving birth to Gaius' son, Eilan will become High Priestess and learn for herself not only the dangerous and exhilarating possibilities of communion with the Goddess but the invasive influence of the Arch-Druid. Will Eilan find the Goddess' Way and her own? And what of that new religion, Christianity, which seems to attract Gaius' unhappy wife and a Forest House ward? An aging priestess, mentor of Eilan, narrates, tells the sad story of lovers' deaths, and takes the child Gawen (of mingled ancestry, presaging a new British people) to the vale of ``Afallon.'' With the sure touch of one at ease in sketching out mystic travels (``It can be very cold between the worlds''), Bradley writes with an unhurried pace and uncluttered staging. And there's a complete list of characters and places (then and now) and a map. Certain to circulate.
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-84454-3
Page Count: 476
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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