Witch Wood

Rating:
Summary: Witch Wood
Review: A good, engaging read. Well developed characters and an excellent insight into a peculiar time of history. Also, a healthy examination of the religious doctrines and culture that define the Scottish Presbyterian presence in what is now referred to as the Reformed Faith.

Rating:
Summary: Fair only
Review: Not one of Buchan's more rewarding works, this novel finds the author in a mournful and disappointed mood. Largely concerned with the doings of a Scots minister in an impoverished lowlands town in the mid seventeenth century, we are tortuously given a social history in microcosm. David Sempill is involved in plots of witchcraft, rural poverty and a bizarre epidemic, Anglo-Scottish border wars and ultimately flight over the seas.In no sense are we swept up into the life or adventures of the hero, as we are say with Richard Hannay in 'Greenmantle' or Dickson McCunn in 'Huntingtower'; both very different classes of hero but both extremely engaging. David Sempill fails the test of engagement and we remain sharply on the side lines, slightly uninterested observers of a time we can hardly credit occured

Rating:
Summary: stick to the witches, buchan!
Review: some really really great descriptions here, of forest and sabbaths. the greatest i have read in fact. a priest tries to persuade his congregation to become good christians. some worship ancient religions. there is a coven performing rituals in the woods. if only Buchan would have sticked to that. but no. intrigues, a love story, doubts, and worst of all: another story completely different than this is formed, and this story is boring. for political reasons the priest needs to defend an action. and that destroys the previous story. in the end it all becomes a mediocre blur.