Customer Reviews

The Bowl of Night: A Bast Mystery

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For less money, you can buy "Bell, Book, and Murder" instead, which is a compilation of all three Bast books (including this one). Wish someone had told me before I bought all four!

As with the previous two Bast mysteries, this one is a rollicking good read. Edghill has a talent for moving the story along with nary a lull in the action. And I must admit, I have a soft place in my heart for the Bast books because they focus on My People. :) However, this particular book was a tad disappointing in that the killer's identity is ridiculously obvious from the moment the body is discovered. For some reason it takes Bast until the end of the book to figure it out, leaving the reader to think, "Well, DUH!" Also, a few loose ends were left hanging, such as who shot the townie? The character of Bast herself is not as strong in this book as in the previous two. She seems a bit lost as she drifts between Lark and Julian, struggles with whether to start her own coven, and generally just gets pushed around by various other characters in the book. Still, it's a good read, and the descriptions of the HallowFest attendees is hilarious. Edghill nails the neopagan community as closely as Sharon McCrumb nailed the sci-fi fan community in Bimbos of the Death Sun.

I enjoyed the three Bast mysteries I've read and wish there were more. The author isn't the greatest mystery writer (that honor goes to Robert Barnard) but the book is interesting to the last page. In fact,it was so interesting it kept my mind off the fact that I was reading it in a small airplane flying in the dark over some pretty high mountains.

Our heroine, Bast, is a complex and multi-talented individual with a vast array of characters...or ahh...friends. The book is well-written, moves at a fast pace from the start, and Edghill writes some of the best descriptions of human thought, reasoning, and deduction I've ever come across (though a bit long-winded at times). I very much enjoyed this book. And, as it is my first Bast mystery, I shall look forward to the next

While I enjoyed reading Edghill's very accurate take on large-scale Pagan outdoor festivals (she captured the logistical nightmares perfectly!), I thought the "Whodunit" aspect was her weakest link.

Some mysteries do reveal the muderer's identity up front, so the book has to focus on the protagonist's hunting skills in discovering the killer. Unfortunately, Bast does everything else but that! She deals with the realities of no longer being able to lean on her old coven for support, and wrestle with the prospect of founding a new one. There's her struggle in sorting out how she's going to find a stable magical partner. And, to cap it off, inter-Community politics rears its ugly head once again and requires Bast to make the painful choice of keeping a trust or doing what is right.

Meanwhile, there's blessed little sleuthing. I think Bast's single intimate encounter with the killer was a rather obvious attempt by the author to drop a Major Hint early on.

As a foray into modern Neo-Paganism, it hits the target. For a mystery novel, its more than a tad weak.