Customer Reviews

Blackmantle (Keltiad)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I read all the comments here before starting Blackmantle, and I must say I generally agree with them all, good *and* bad, particularly the one about the "heaving bosom" cover. The book looks like a Harlequin romance, for heaven's sake! They're not even wearing the most important jewelry mentioned in the book.

Blackmantle *is* Kennealy's retelling of her relationship with Jim Morrison, except set in Keltia. That was fairly obvious even to me, and I haven't read any of her non-fiction about that relationship. That said, it did not interfere a great deal with the story, in my opinion. The weakness of this story was not its basis in Kennealy's life, but the lack of action, too much tell and not enough show, and the complete underdevelopment of almost every character that wasn't Athyn, and that includes Morric. I couldn't tell you anything much about any of Athyn's friends or siblings, since they were basically just a name and nothing more.

On the positive side, I must say that this book has some interesting scenes about the faerie folk, the Keltic gods, and explanations for a few of the elements in the books that come later in Keltia's timeline. Also, I did enjoy it fairly well, despite its predictibility and lack of depth because it was meant to be a fable about true love and the length someone will go to to restore that love. Is it the best of her Keltia books? No, not by a long shot. It's probably the worst. But it's not unreadable. If you miss Keltia, visit your library and take it out.

My introduction to Kenneally's work was the Aeron series, and I loved every word of it. I had much the same reaction to the three Arthur books, piqued by the fact that the Arthurian material, and particularly women in the Arthurian material, is my academic specialty. So when Arthur's hero and role model appeared on the book store shelf, I grabbed the book, sped home, fed the cats and dogs, ditched a whole pile of English II essays, ordered out and prepared for an all-nighter.

Well.

I slept like a baby. To date I have tried three times to read this book and have now given up. The book is not about Athyn, it's about the author and her relationship with Jim Morrison. It's a roman a clef that could be picked by a geriatric nun with a hairpin. Truth: I don't care about Kenneally's private concerns, her marriage or lack of it to Jim Morrison, or her personal acrimony toward the other people in the man's life. When I pick up a novel about Keltia, I want it to be about Kelts, drat it! Blackmantle is autobiography, it may be therapy, but it's not "A Novel of the Keltiad."

As Patricia Kennealy-Morrison will tell anyone who listens, she once was briefly wed to Doors frontman Jim Morrison. But she rewrites her own love life in "Blackmantle," a messy and rather dizzying fantasy novel, which is too vengeful and wild to be enjoyable in its own right.

Imagine her autobiography "Strange Days," but with a lot more murder.

Athyn was born on a battlefield to a dying mystery woman, and was brought back home as a foundling by one of the surviving warriors. Years later, she is cast out of her family's home by her cruel foster brother, and goes on to become a legendary brehon. Then she discovers the shocking truth -- she is actually the hereditary queen of Keltia.

During this time, she also falls in love with famed bard Morric Douglass. Eventually the two are married, as Athyn drives out the Firvolgi invaders. But the beautiful junkie Amzalsunëa is still obsessed with Morric, and poisons him when he comes to comfort her. Now Athyn goes on a rampage against anyone who wronged Morric -- and then goes into the underworld itself, to challenge the god of death.

At first glance, "Blackmantle" sounds like a sci-fi version of the Orpheus legend. But it becomes clear after a short time that this is a therapy session put to paper, where Kennealy-Morrison can get revenge on all the people in her life who have ticked her off, then live happily ever after with an idealized, faithful Morrison. It gets a little stomach-turning, in more than one way.

It certainly doesn't help that Athyn -- Kennealy-Morrison's glorified alter ego -- is such a nasty person. At one point, she skins and debones several men for trivial slights; she also hunts down and beheads Morric's ex-girlfriend, who is a parodic copy of Morrison's longtime girlfriend Pamela Courson. Not to mention the brutal racism toward the Incomers, whose sole flaw seems to be that they are not Kelts. By the last third of the book, it's hard not to wish that a meteor would crush Athyn.

Kennealy-Morrison has an admittedly pretty style, with plenty of description and some truly interesting scene, particularly her vision of the Underworld. It does get a bit exaggerated in its faux-Celtic (faux-Keltic?) atmosphere at times. Unfortunately, it's bogged down by too much talking from Athyn, too much adoration of the plastic Morric, and too much sneering at the absurd parody of Courson.

Reality and fantasy collide with a nasty splat in "Blackmantle." In the end, it seems merely like a way for Kennealy-Morrison to get back at Courson and the Doors in fiction, as she could not do in life.

Although I have not read the author's non-fiction book about her relationship with Jim Morrison, it was apparent early on that this book was somewhat autobiographical. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the author's bitterness and anger flaws a story that could have been very well written. Unlike all of her other books that I have read, none of the characters in Blackmantle, other than Athyn, have much depth, and what is written about Morric is very contradictory; one gets the impression that she is trying to portray him as a very high and admirable character, similar to Gwydion, but on the other hand, most of his life choices and actions show quite the reverse. Similarly, we are "told" that Athyn is an extremely admirable person, but what we are "shown" is not nearly as flattering. Athyn appears to be a person overly dominated by anger and an unforgiving bitterness. With few exceptions, the attitude towards the Incomers comes across as pathetically racist with little in the way of justice to it.

I believe that the author suffers from a lot of personal pain, but her inability to forgive probably causes her more pain than whatever it was she went through. She seems quite proud of the fact that her faith teaches "we don't turn the other cheek: we rip off both of yours". Most abuse victims learn, eventually, that forgiveness is not a gift you give to your abuser, but the opposite entirely: not forgiving the people who have hurt you simply grants them the power to carry right on hurting you, even if they're dead and gone. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.

Once again, the formula of red-haired woman married to a dark-haired man facing the rivalry of a white-blond woman emerges, but this time freighted with more personal baggage than the hold of the Titanic at its maiden voyage. Ms. Kennealy-Morrison has accomplished two things with this book; both accomplishments should have rated a warning label on the cover.

The author's primary accomplishment was to aid her therapist by building an entire novel around her version of events with Jim Morrison in the long-ago; her therapist, presumably better-paid and with more leisure time than I, could in good conscience be expected to read this novel. WARNING: This novel contains very little artistic merit, and is designed to get back at someone who died before the author could sufficiently abuse them because of how they treated her husband.

The secondary accomplishment (though by no means a small one) is the production of a book whose prose style forces the reader to examine it "through a hill, greenly." Although usually an excellent writer, Ms. Kennealy-Morrison strings parenthetical asides and stilted faux-Gaelic expressions together in this work like some demented cartoon leprechaun, producing endless run-on constructions that would shame Darby O'Toole at his most drunken. WARNING: May cause the reader to decide the only useful product of Ireland is whiskey.

These points having been made, an author as (usually) excellent as the one who brought us Aeron and Arthur deserves our support despite the occasional stinker. Here's hoping that the Brendan series is better!

When I first read Patricia's book of the Keltaid, I was hooked. The Tales of Aeron were fantastic, but unfortunatley, I picked up Blackmantle. It is my firm opinion that Patricia's writing is being destroyed by her own bitterness and anger. After reading the other reviews, I agree that this is an autobiography of Patricia and her time with Jim Morrison. Throughout this book were lacunae that seemed to be Patricia reminiscing over her own relationship with Jim Morrison. This distracted from the book greatly as I got the book to read a tale of the Keltaid and not about Patricia and Jim.

On top of that, Patricia gets very vindictive in this book towards all those who she perceives as betrayers of Jim Morrison. She meets out vengeful and harsh punishments on those who betrayed the great bard Morric Douglas. This is just the way for Patricia to get even with all those who knocked Jim Morrison over the years. It gets pendatic very fast and distracts from the story.

And her supposed heroine, Athynn, who never forgets or forgives is really a horrible person. Athynn is supposed to be great and full of justice, but don't tell that to her enemies as she goes out of her way to brutally murder all of them. Not my idea of an ideal king or queen, but Athynn is the greates queen of Keltia. If that is so, I don't ever want to go there!

I hope that Patricia gets some therapy to help her with her fixation on Jim Morrison and her own bitterness and anger. Once she does that hopefully she can write further good stories about Keltia; otherwise, I think she needs to stop writing period.

While I'm quite fond of the Keltiad series, I have to say this is the weakest of the series. If your both a fan of Patricia Kennealy-Morrison and her late husband Jim, then yes, you might like this book, both for the inside references and what might have been.

However, if you're not a Doors fan and have no interest in their music, this book becomes a painful exercise in patience. Ultimately, one has to realize that this book is Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's attempt to exercise the ghosts of her past and is in fact her therapy. It's a shame her readers had to foot the bill though. It's a shame her husband died, but life and the wheel goes on, and Ms. Kennealy-Morrison needs to let go of her husband's ghost and live for herself again.

Besides which, this book, (along with "The Deers Cry"), has horrid, vile, "romance novel" style covers. This hurts the book worse than the writing does, because those who might be interested in Fantasy/Science Fiction tend to avoid romance books, and romance readers will get turned off by the F/SF elements.

Since I've never been a fan of the Doors, nor do I know much about Jim Morrison's life (and no, I've never seen the movie either)...I did not see the connections between the author's life with JM, or the love-triangle implied therein by the characters in the book. It is with that in mind that I feel I can give an impartial review of this title. It took me a good full chapter to actually get into the cadence of her prose, but once there the story went quickly. I did find the frequent "Keltic" words distracting and tended to pull me completely out of the story. I found the characters sympathic, though I would have liked have seen the story divided equally from both Athyn and Morric's POV's. There were too many magnificent happenings (meeting the faerie-folk, and a ghost horse kind of capped it for me) for one book no matter how lengthy that book happened to be, but I suppose I understand the need for them as plot device. Over all it wasn't a bad read. I read The Copper Crown several years ago and remember it being better. I will read the next book, though, as I don't believe in judging an author solely on the merits or faults of one book.

I saw one review that concurs with my assessment. Let me start by saying as a child I read all I could get a hold of about King Arthur and druids and welsh mythology. I read Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion series and many others. When I discovered the first books on Aeron I was excited and pleased beyond words. They were great books, great characters with a profound knowledge of Celtic life, clan structure, spiritual tradtions and beautiful undertanding of magic. I strongly recommend all the Keltiad books save this one.

I felt seriously scammed and ripped off. I wouls sell the book, but I would hat to subject anyone else to it. The book is a personal venting of Patricia's lingering bitterness and loss over her brief affair with Jim Morrison. Her trite anagrams of Oliver Stone and each of the Doors and entrourage as characters is sad.

I recently read Ray Manzarek's wonderful book about Jim Morrison and the Doors, and he has one fleeting mention of Patricia. He has no harsh words to say about her in his book. Patricia creates a fantasy where the Doors are responsible for Jim's death. She revels in the dismembering of the band.

Her hatred and bitterness are the sad signs of a brilliant women lost and poisoned by hatred. I pray for her and hope she recovers her peace, her talent and her strength in her Self, and her work independent of her love affair with Jim Morrison and her need to be recognized by someone (? who, why us?) as his wife.

I absolutely adored the Aeron books, struggled a little to finish the Arthur books, but this one; well, lets just say I hope the next one's better.

I lost track of the characters, because they were never fleshed out. I was a bit disturbed by the punishments metered out (especially in light of the fact that she has stated the characters are based on people she knows), mainly because the reasons behind the punishments were not clearly speeled out (I mean, killing someone for writing unflattering comments? )

I hope the next books are more in line with the original idea: although Ms Kennealy-Morrison obviously misses her beau, this really should lay it to rest as far as rebuilding him in the Keltiad series.