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A review by stellagramina
The Burning Time by Robin Morgan
3.0
I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it to anyone interested in medieval history, Celtic lore, feminism, witch trials, and the Inquisition. If you're not interested in these things, you might be after you read the book; it's a quick, engaging read, a work of historical fiction. There's a lot of interesting interplay between good and evil, men and women, the colonizer and the colonized, the Church and God, and so on. It's an excellent book club book because it lends itself so well to discussion and comparison with the present.
I didn't rank it higher because I felt a strong sense of revisionism in the parts about witchcraft. Morgan seems to make the case that modern Wicca is a pretty pure survival/imitation of older ways, when it seems pretty clear to me that Gerald Gardner made most of it up. Some of the dialogue felt a little forced, too, when characters would have Important Political Discussions with one another, which reminded me of the heavy-handedness of Tolstoy's dialogue in Anna Karenina.
Criticisms aside, it's a good book and definitely worth a read. I will most certainly be reading more of Robin Morgan's work.
I didn't rank it higher because I felt a strong sense of revisionism in the parts about witchcraft. Morgan seems to make the case that modern Wicca is a pretty pure survival/imitation of older ways, when it seems pretty clear to me that Gerald Gardner made most of it up. Some of the dialogue felt a little forced, too, when characters would have Important Political Discussions with one another, which reminded me of the heavy-handedness of Tolstoy's dialogue in Anna Karenina.
Criticisms aside, it's a good book and definitely worth a read. I will most certainly be reading more of Robin Morgan's work.