Rating: 
Summary: TWO LEOPARDS
Review: This is not theology. It is a mythic prose poem. Not unlike a mind altering molecule; but safer; maybe. Read this for the raven, the mirror,and the library if for nothing else.
Rating:
Summary: A good kind of weird.
Review: This is the story of a man wandering through a dream-world -- or perhaps, out of our world of dreams. (Macdonald's story puts an interesting spin on the ancient Chinese riddle.) Whether dream or awakening, you may have to wander for a while before you get your bearings. The whole book works a strange magic on the susceptible reader, but it may take me a few more journeys to figure it out very well. MacDonald tells his story, or weaves his magic, for a deeper part of the soul than most authors attempt to reach. There is a good kind of weird going on here: a raven who is a librarian, a moon that protects a traveler, a cat woman whose scratches heal. The villains in this book are nasty indeed, though Macdonald shows how pain and loss (which he embodies with some ghastly images) can bring about the worst person's redemption. (His thoughts on that subject bring to mind another image of hell, "the death room" of a communist prison camp where the Jewish pastor Richard Wurmbrand lived for two and a half years. "Fascists, Communists, saints, murderers, thieves, priests," he said, "none died without making his peace with God and man." So there is some empirical base for his hopes; though perhaps less Scriptural.) This book is not for everyone -- it is not "science fiction," but fantasy, a genre some people cannot abide. A couple good companion volumes would be C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, and M. Scott Peck's The People of the Lie, both of which contain related insights into the nature of The Great Choice. (In fact, in the former, Lewis makes Macdonald his guide to heaven and hell.) ...
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