Rating: Summary: One or two good moments, but frustrating overall Review: This review refers to the audiobook version, and I am half tempted to read the print book, just to see how much of a negative impact the guy reading it on tape has on the story, except that I don't really want to spend the money. The person reading the book on tape tends to over-emote and has a grating voice. In his defense, the overemoting may be because the words themselves are rather flat and bland. Transitions are too abrupt, especially scene changes - Winter Musgrave's elemental sets fire to her car early in the story, so I often found myself trying to figure out how she got from one place to the other. Winter is an annoying and unsympathetic person, and I could not work up much interest in her (except that I kept hoping her elemental would just drop something on her head and put US out of her misery). The reactions of the characters were mostly either flat or inappropriately violent. I'm curious now about the other books in the "-light" series, and the occult aspect is interesting, but overall this book was disappointing, especially with so much potential. (And yes I read Mists of Avalon, but so long ago that I don't remember much of it. So for me this book doesn't really suck IN COMPARISON to Mists, it sucks in it's own right.)
Rating: Summary: Magickal Child Review: Winter Musgrave loves her work as a high-powered trader on Wall Street. The only problem is, she can't seem to remember her life before her job. And then, when animals drained of their blood start showing up in her path, she believes that she is losing her mind. After a psychiatric clinic fails to help her, she turns to the Bidney Institute, a resource center for parapsychology. Despite her disbelief, she begins to trust in the researchers. They find that Winter's problems are stemming from what they call a "magickal child," and believe that she must recreate a Blackburn circle that she was a part of in college in order to rid herself of the unwanted occurrences. I found the plot of this book to be intruiging and fast-moving - probably the best in Bradley's *Light series. At points my lack of knowledge of occult or parapsychological phenomena hindered my understanding, however that is not a fault of the author but of my limited knowledge. I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in parapsychological phenomena.
Rating: Summary: Witchlight Review: Winter Musgrave suffers from a problem that is much deeper than a mid-life crisis. She awakens one day with just a few minor threads of memory from her three plus decades of life. To make matters worse, strange phenomena seem to occur whenever she is in the area. When she walks, nearby objects enigmatically shatter. When she sleeps, locked doors and shuttered windows mysteriously open by themselves. Mutilated dead animals inexplicably begin to appear on the doorstep of her upstate New York cabin. Winter fears that she is either going insane or is demonically possessed. Desperate, Winter visits a psychic research clinic where she becomes a patient of Truth Jourdemayne. Working as a team, the duo begins to recover segments of Winter's lost memory. The most significant information to surface is that Winter was once a member of a magic-practicing coven. This and other recovered threads make Winter realize that she must confront a horrible evil presence. To survive and hopefully win her epic psychic battle with that ghastly malfeasance, Winter travels around the country trying to locate and enlist the help of her former coven mates. Due to its great heroine, Witchlight is a fabulous New Age novel that is as good as its predecessor, Ghostlight. Characters from the first novel add a feel of homecoming to this complex, relationship-driven tale. Still, though the tale is very good and Ms. Bradley demonstrates that she remains a top gun though this book is not on the same level of Darkover.
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