3 out of 4 stars
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“The Druid’s Curse” by C.J. McWain is impressive in both its literary background and historical research, and it possesses a depth that one doesn’t often find in the realm of fiction. This tale, which spans over a thousand years, begins with the tale of a Druidic Oracle living in Ireland during the height of the Roman Empire. This young lady, Anai, falls in love with Leor, a Celtic outsider, and breaks tradition by sleeping with him. Her intended Druidic husband Laidir is furious at Anai’s betrayal of him and of her people, but he still insists upon marrying her, hoping that his love and his incredible, supernatural gifts will win her affections.
This initial connection between Anai, Leor, and Laidir creates the love triangle around which the rest of the book is based. Upon catching Anai and Leor in each other’s arms, Laidir uses his powers to cast a curse, binding the three of them and dooming them to repeat their story over and over throughout history.
We follow the fated trio first to medieval England, where Laidir appears as Merlin, the powerful sorcerer from the tales of King Arthur. Their next manifestation occurs in Renaissance Italy, followed by a meeting in the untamed wilds of newly discovered America. The tale comes full circle when the three characters meet in modern day Ireland at the site of their original Celtic home.
When I first read the synopsis of this book, my main concern was that the story would become dull as Anai and her two lovers repeated their actions exactly, with only the setting and names changing. My concern was quelled as I read, though. The trio is not just doomed to a cycle of unrequited and illicit love. In each new historical setting, their relationships evolve. We see Laidir become more compassionate toward the man who wronged him, Leor become more resolute not to get involved with a married woman, and Anai become more devoted to her husband, even though her heart and body long for Leor. By the last few pages, I was turning pages quickly, wondering what final decisions the trio would make to land them in a happily ever after.
Another way the author differentiated between each new setting was by altering the style of the prose to reflect the historical time period. For example, when Anai became reborn as Dante, the Italian Renaissance poet, the dialogue reflected the style of Dante’s poetry. This not only required a great deal of flexibility and talent on the part of the writer, it also called for a good deal of research.
As well-researched as this book was, however, in many cases, the research got in the way of the storyline. Especially in the original setting—the Druidic tribe—the author would halt the forward motion of the story to digress about an irrelevant historical item. For instance, there was an entire chapter devoted to the traditional Druid marriage ceremony—a chapter that could have been summed up in two or three sentences with no detriment to the plot.
This is just a small example of the largest issue I had with this book: pacing. The title of the book—The Druid’s Curse—refers to the curse Laidir puts on himself, his wife, and her lover. However, said curse doesn’t even occur until halfway through the 563 page book. The author put a great deal of detail into the first half of the story in an attempt to lay the background for the three lovers’ torment in the rest of the book. Many of the events in the first half of the book were totally unnecessary to the central theme, though, and could easily have been shortened or eliminated.
After such a long, drawn out exposition, the rest of the book came as a shock. The events of the second setting—medieval England—occurred in the space of a couple chapters at most, striking a stark contrast in pacing.
Much of the pacing issue can be attributed to too much auxiliary information. While I appreciate the author’s attention to detail, there are many secondary characters and secondary plot lines that aren’t vital to the forward motion of the story, and by including them, the author bogs the reader down in the process of sorting through the information to find that which is most relevant. I didn’t need to know about the Druidic tribal wars on Caesar, Laidir’s hiding spot for Merlin’s cauldron, or Leor’s first bison hunt to understand the main conflict. When the author and her editor went through the editing process, they could have been more generous with their paring knives.
The other issue I have with this book is chiefly grammatical. The author employs a wide range of vocabulary words, but most of them are misspelled, confused for their homonyms. Some of the most striking examples were the use of “isle” instead of “aisle”, “waive” instead of “wave”, “wrap” in place of “rap”, and “passed” in place of “past”. At first, these cropped up so infrequently that I hadn’t planned on mentioning it in my review. As the book progressed, though, the frequency of these grammatical errors increased, and some more common word usage mistakes cropped up: to vs. too; their, they’re, and there; and your vs. you’re. By the end, I was hoping that the C.J. McWain hadn’t paid an editor to review the whole book, because it seemed that as the story ran long, the editor’s patience ran short.
Overall, the issues of pacing and grammatical fluency stuck in my craw as I read “The Druid’s Curse”. However, neither of these problems take away from the author’s brilliance in research, voice, and character development. All told, I give this book 3 out of 4 stars. “The Druid’s Curse” is very different from the formulaic fiction you see swarming the bookstores these days, and if you have the time to settle in for a long read and the patience to overlook poor word usage, then this book is a wise choice.
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The Druid's Curse
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