(Review by Jane Beaumont, Cape Town, South Africa)

The front page blurb calls this "an eerie and disturbing fusion of Christian and pagan mythology" - this ain't the half of it! Ms Wood is related somewhere along the line either to the Marquis de Sade or Clive Barker - she positively revels in lush, brocaded descriptions of tortures, maimings, eccentric cruelties and the like. I found this side of the book unnecessary and distasteful but perhaps it's your bag.

On the other hand, Sorceress' Christian/Pagan myth bit IS quite interesting. It's well known that Christianity grafted itself onto earlier beliefs to ease acceptance, resulting in some lovely variations in litany details in different countries and, in some cases, very iffy related practices - voodoo practitioners claim that their rituals are pure catholicism for example. However, the goddess of spring - Eostre- quite obviously gave her name to Easter, as well as the egg/golden/rabbit symbolism. What's a wee bit more difficult for the devout Christian to swallow is the relationship of the Christ figure to the sacrificial priest-king, slaughtered ritually once a year to guarantee good harvests.

Sorry, I digress a bit.

Sorceress uses an imaginary scion of a magical old-Irish dynasty, linked to an early missionary monk to explore the links and similarities between celtic "superstition" and Christian belief. This part of the book is interesting and unusual. The remainder is fairly standard questing fare with rather more than the normal body count.

If you'd like another look from a different viewpoint at the sidh , the Fisher King and assorted older races marginally pre-extinction, this is a fun book. Wood writes fluently and her characters, while not utterly riveting, are strong enough to make you care what happens to them.

She uses verbal 'cross-cutting' a lot as a technique which can be a bit muddly if you put the book down momentarily (for a rest; it weighs about a kilo) and struggle to remember just which sub-plot you're involved in right now. With regard to that, I wonder why no one else ever used Ende's solution as seen in the hardback original of Neverending Story where different aspects used different colour prints? OK colour might be prohibitively pricy but maybe typefaces?

I digress again.

Sorceress is Wood's fourth fantasy novel. I'm going to see if my library has any other, earlier ones. Wolf King sounds interesting and I'd like to see if she has other spry styles, hopefully minus the savagery!