Blackness Tower [Paperback]

Lillian Stewart Carl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 2008

For years, Lauren Reay has experienced vivid dreams of a castle keep and a chapel overlooking the sea. Then she finds the real place: a restored 16th-century Blackness Tower on the coast of northern Scotland. Inside the tower, owned by handsome but reclusive Douglas Sutherland, she finds a 19th-century portrait of a 16th-century woman... who has Lauren's face. Blackness Tower holds strange powers and elemental presences that will change Lauren's life forever.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Juno Books (March 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809572028
• ISBN-13: 978-0809572021
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,752,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A child of the American heartland, Lillian Stewart Carl graduated from grade school in Missouri, from high school in Ohio, and from college in Texas. She should have a Bachelor of Arts in History, but inadvertently found herself with a Bachelor of Science in Education. Either way, she's now pursuing one of the few jobs that can be done with a background in history and English--writing fiction that invokes a legendary past, even in contemporary settings.

It's no surprise that Lillian and her long-suffering husband have wandered countless British single-track roads, from Orkney to Dover and back again. Also, just for variety, she has excavated the Biblical city of Gezer in Israel, worn a pink and mauve sari to a wedding in Hyderabad, India, searched for Middle Earth in New Zealand, and sung "Waltzing Matilda" in a haunted cottage in the Australian outback.

Being generally a mild-mannered individual, Lillian has yet to throw anyone across the room with her tai chi skills. Nor has she stabbed anyone with her knitting needles or slammed anyone's fingers except her own in the cover of her piano keyboard.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thrilling supernatural modern day gothic tale, May 6, 2008

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blackness Tower (Paperback)

For years Laura Reay dreamed of a tower with people from the past living in it. Everyone except her grandfather dismissed it as her imagination until the day a calendar arrived from Cathiness, Scotland with the picture from August showing Blackness Tower, the place she has dreamed of for years.

David was looking for realism when he bought and restored Blackwell Tower. When he takes her into his house, she sees portraits of Catherine and Suzanne who could have been her twins, but lived at the tower during different eras. Laura stays with her cousin twice removed Emma who knows that Blackness Tower brought Laura over here for a purpose. Laura and David must make a treacherous journey into another realm so the ghosts of Blackwell Tower can find peace; failure means Laura will join the dead haunting the place.

Lillian Stewart Carl writes a thrilling supernatural modern day gothic thriller that starts off with a woman coming to terms with a different reality that she saw in her dreams. Now she must enter Fairy to break an evil spell that engulfs David's home. There is plenty of action with people who lived past lives influencing decisions made by the heroine. BLACKNESS TOWER focuses on a brave woman coming to grips with her gift of Sight and a man who needs healing finding love with one another.

Harriet Klausner

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mystical Scotland, July 27, 2008

By 

Linda E. Shields (Calgary, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blackness Tower (Paperback)

Back to her roots as a fantasy writer, this book is not a modern murder mystery, but the compelling story about a strange tower in the North of Scotland, which calls Lauren Reay from America to the home of her ancestors. As is the usual in Carl's books the mysteries are both ancient and modern and Lauren must work her way through a maze (both literally and figuratively) to understand not only the message of the tower but also the truth of her family's departure from Scotland and the disappearance of her father when she was only a young child.

Although Lauren hauntingly resembles a woman whose portrait was painted in the tower in the 1800's, she learns that beauty is a two-edged sword. The men who inhabit the tower are drawn to that beauty but, like the woman from the past, Lauren cannot trust that they want her for herself but only for what she seems to be.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric, June 14, 2008

By 

Helen Hancox "Auntie Helen" (Essex, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blackness Tower (Paperback)

It was difficult to know what to make of this book. In some ways it was really interesting with atmospheric writing, a varied cast of characters and an underlying historical mystery. In other ways it was a disappointment, never really gripping, sometimes very heavy going and with occasional inaccuracies in terms of the setting in Scotland.

Narrated by the central character, Lauren Reay, we follow her as she journeys to Scotland to visit Blackness Tower, a building that has been in her dreams and imagination for years before she realised it truly existed. The owner of Blackness Tower, ex-soldier David Sutherland, has been dismissive of her over the phone but when she arrives in the village and he sees her in person the situation changes. Lauren is a doppelgänger for a woman in a painting that hangs in Blackness Tower, one of her ancestors, and so starts a journey of discovery for Lauren. There's an archaeologist digging up the grave of her ancestor and TV presenter looking for proof of the paranormal and these four characters intersect, discover new things and mistrust each other until the secret behind Lauren's dreams is revealed.

I have alluded to some of the things that I didn't find satisfying in the book, the main one being the local Scottish people lapsing into Americanisms. I also found the pace of the book quite difficult to cope with, events rolling on one after the other with little time for reflection and understanding. The people were all a little weird (which I believe isn't the case in Scotland) and weren't entirely convincing as characters. However, overall it was a reasonable read, particularly with the quality of the author's descriptive writing and her imagination.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2008