Customer Reviews

Magdalen Rising: The Beginning (The Maeve Chronicles)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is being suckered into buying a book twice because it has been re-issued under another title. This book is a fun read and I'm really enjoying this series, but don't buy "Magdalen Rising" if you already own "Daughter of the Shining Isle". It's the same book.

First Century CE and the child of eight mothers, Maeve is on her way to the Druidic school to study as a bard. There she meets her stepbrother, as she calls him, Esus of Jerusalem, who is also studying there to be an ovate. This is the first year the Druids have taken seven women into their school to study with the males. Maeve, raised with visions and goddess mothers, has a transcendent healing power. When someone is in pain or dying she can relieve their pain, and even bring them back to life, by laying her fiery hands on them.

Some, especially the Jew Esus, thinks she could be a witch, but the powers she has are hers alone and are fashioned after the Druidic arts. Esus and Maeve are very different; he was raised in a crowded world where he "was accustomed to throwing his weight around." Maeve was the adorable, spoiled child being raised on Tir na mBan, who grew up in a world of women and stories. Storytelling is considered an art. The Druids don't write down their stories because keeping memories and shared stories alive creates unity between tribes.

Saying "Tir na mBan" to the Druid's makes them fall into a spell, almost as if this is a mythical place. Maeve's father is the God of the Sea and in her mind Esus and her are both divine. She wants desperately to connect to Esus and she thinks when he shuns her, "So we are different, as different as day and night. But listen, don't day and night meet again and again, one turning into the other? Isn't that how the world is made and made new?"

Magdelan Rising is an intriguing book, combining current pop culture and ancient rituals. This book is a stunning portrayal of a young, naive Esus, who is known to us as Jesus, and Maeve, a gorgeous Celtic goddess who eventually becomes Mary Magdalen.

Excellent book, highly recommended for its levity, wit and knowledge of the first century CE and Druidic culture, along with a glimpse of a confused teenage Jesus.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a phenomenal historical perspective of life in the time of Esus and his foil, Maeve.

In an imaginative blend of ancient Celtic Paganism, Christianity, and modern secularism, Elizabeth Cunningham delivers the prequel to The Passion of Mary Magdalen in Magdalen Rising: The Beginning. Maeve Rhuad describes her childhood, being a daughter of the divine raised by eight warrior-witch mothers. An enchanted adolescence brings fourteen-year-old Maeve to meet her cosmic twin, Esus, at college.

The story is told from Maeve's point-of-view, with the awareness that she is speaking to a twenty-first century reader. She relates events that may seem strange to the reader by comparing them to their modern equivalents. This contrast caught me off guard at first, but as the story progressed, I began to appreciate the added dimension. The book is divided into five parts, each representing a phase in Maeve's life.

Maeve is a fiery red head who has been raised and initiated into the world of the sacred feminine, found herself a namesake for legendary warrior Queen Maeve of Connacht, and has earned her entry into a druid college as part of an experimental coed admissions policy. She is also no stranger to sarcasm, and her tongue-in-cheek commentary throughout the novel adds a comic spin to a somber story that, at times, is wrought with tragedy. Her headstrong challenges to Esus's school of thought will make the reader either laugh out loud or sigh in resigned agreement.

The novel is a challenge to conventional thought that offers some fascinating alternatives to popular legends. Maeve is a heroine for today's reader, and the general reverence for the sacred feminine is a refreshing quality. I began this series with the prequel, but I fully intend to get my hands on the first and forthcoming releases. Fans of Juliette Marillier's fantasy will undoubtedly become loyal fans of Elizabeth Cunningham, as well.

I had been awaiting the 2nd in the "Magdalene Trilogy" after reading the outstanding 'Daughter's of the Shining Isle'.
I decided to rush delivery of 'Magdalene Rising' to take on vacation. Imagine my disappointment when I kept thinking I'd read this before. Very soon into the book I realized it WAS the same book as 'Daughters of the Shining Isle'.

I would love an explanation from the author. It kind of makes me angry to waste my money & be duped like this.

I will read the reviews from now on.

To start with-yes this book "Daughter of the shining isles" and you shouldn't waste your money if you already own that book. But by the time I heard of that novel, it was out of print and expensive to obtain. So I went with the newly published, changed title version.

And I loved it. Really, really loved it. As a pagan, a woman and a lover of literature and history.

So lets say that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were cosmic twins of a sort-both born under that shining star-only Jesus was born in Bethlehem (but in a cave not a stable) and Mary (Maeve) on a semi-mythical island of women on Britain's western shore. That they meet in visions and dreams and finally at druid school on the Isle of Mona. Who knows-maybe it could have happened. Lots of people think Jesus might have been in England at some point.

I was raised without any influence from the Christian faith (except that which is gained through osmosis simple from living in America) so I can't speak to the Christian implications and inside jokes and hidden meaning in the book. But I can say that if you can accept it without feeling obliged to yell out "Blasphemy!" then you will find some kind of statement of faith inside these pages you can relate to.

In addition to the faith element of this novel there is a huge humor strain-even about the heaviest of subjects (and there is a great deal of heavy subjects. If you can't stand sorrow, fear, and sacrifice-don't read this.) Maeve's narration is at times laugh out funny, at times a little gross with potty jokes and a few too many references to functions of the female body. But it all evens out leaving you hopeless entwined with her story by page five. And the sense that are you reading about more than just a girl who got caught up in history by a quirk of fate. Maeve was meant for such things. Fated to be....a god? Goddess? Or just Maeve....Maeve the brave....

Five stars.

For the benefit of anyone wondering if this is a schlocky historical romance tarted up as a piece of serious fiction: fear not. I haven't seen Maeve Chronicles II yet, but I picked up *The Beginning* (previously published under a different title) to thumb through it and read 20 pages standing in the bookstore. I read around all through it, and I hated to put it down. I can't wait for my own copies of both books to read.

The premise -- that Jesus and Mary Magdalene met as youths at a Druid school in Britain, and Mary was a Bradleyesque Celt -- is ridiculous and wonderfully credible. Cunningham's intelligence and wit pull it off. Imagine Evangeline Walton without inhibitions.

She has researched the Celts just fine, and her bawdy, literate narrator heroine will have you smiling after a single paragraph. I think I'm in love. A sexy chick who can toss a caber. Mercy.

Read it as a brilliant addition to the F&SF genre or with New Age enthusiasm; you will enjoy it. I'm looking forward to every page, and to the unpublished third volume.

Everyone loves a grand storyteller! For some unexplainable reason, some have the gift and some don't. But one thing is always clear - lovers of story instantly recognize a true storyteller, a bard to be sure who can grip the attention and imagination of the listener and hold it far beyond the end of the tale!

Magdalen Rising is an enigma for sure! As the prequel to The Passion of Mary Magdalene, it introduces the reader to the childhood and teenage training of Maeve. Born to warrior witches of Tir na mBan and the god of the sea, Manannan Mac Lir (or so we are led to think for a very long time), Maeve grows with confidence, indeed one may even think precociousness, and grace into the mysteries of nature and the myths of her Celtic beloved people. The visions, extraordinary experiences, and spiritual rites she experiences are totally fascinating, spiked in between her racy, bold, and indomitable spirit!

Nothing prepares her for the actual meeting and interaction she will undergo with her beloved, Esus the Stranger (later known as yes, Jesus), and the opposition and attacks she will face from the authoritarian Druids.

Each story within this novel is connected and rivets the reader, uniting in a deeper understanding of Celtic culture and mythology. Yet the story actually has very little substance beyond this Celtic connection. We never get to know Esus very well and Maeve seems to be a stranger even to her own people, coming from a land whose female inhabitants are believed to be witches. The mystical quality of Druids is somewhat lost and even embattled in this account of the land where Maeve travels to be schooled.

Elizabeth Cunningham is a grand storyteller who fascinates and haunts the reader, creating a legend about Esus and Maeve that obviously carries into later Judaism and Christianity. But it does little more, leaving the reader feeling a bit cheated, especially after the stunning predecessor to this novel!

Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on April 24, 2007

Recently, in Janet Boyer's `The Back in Time Tarot Book: Picture the Past, Experience the Cards, Understand the Present,' I came across author Elizabeth Cunningham's illustration of how a character and his/her exploits in a book could be symbolized by the cards of the Tarot. The character in Cunningham's example was her own creation, Maeve Rhuad, the star of three of her novels (with a fourth entitled Blacked-Robed Priestess in the making) that together comprise the "The Maeve Chronicles (The Passion of Mary Magdalen: A Novel (The Maeve Chronicles), Bright Dark Madonna: A Novel (The Maeve Chronicles))." With major arcana cards like "The High Priestess," "The Tower," "The Devil," "Death," "The Hanged One," and "The Star" introducing the outspoken fictional Maeve, I could not help but be compelled to give this series a try. And I am so delighted that I did. "Magdelen Rising: The Beginning," the first in the series chronologically, presents the story of so-called `disciple' Mary Magdelen's tumultuous relationship with Jesus of Nazareth from a new and fiery perspective that cannot fail to entertain those who want to go beyond the mystery of The Da Vinci Code and understand the myth and earthiness of the civilizations that lived before Christianity changed the known world.

Grant you; this depiction may offend those who strictly adhere to the written word of the Bible, although the story told in these pages deals with the time in Christ's life before his thirtieth year. Many theories exist as to what Jesus of Nazareth did between the ages of twelve and thirty. Legends of Great Britain include that of the magical island of Avalon, King Arthur and the Holy Grail in which Joseph of Arimathea (the owner of the tomb in which Christ lay after his crucifixion) plays a large, if not mythic role. In "Magdalen Rising: The Beginning," Cunningham embellishes the link between Christ and the British Isles by weaving a magical tale that begins on one of the Shining Isles. Tir Na mBan is a legendary place of the Celts populated by beautiful women who function similarly to Circe and the Sirens of Greek Mythology in that they had the power to entice men to their island home and keep them sated with music, good food and of course, sex to the point that they had no desire to leave.

As a daughter of Tir Na mBan, Cunningham's Maeve epitomizes the strong Celtic woman. Voluptuous, redheaded, athletic, brazen and clever, she tells her story on a multi-dimensional level that transcends time. Foregoing the use of metaphor and language of the era of Roman expansion into the British Isles, Cunningham opts for the vernacular of today's world so that today's reader understands on today's terms emotional, mental, physical and spiritual underpinnings that are universal to the human cosmology rather than just to a particular age. The reader gets the sense that Maeve has been sent to instruct and guide rather than to just tell her tale. In a pantheon of gods and goddesses, she stakes her claim. In `Magdalen Rising: The Beginning,' Maeve relates her childhood of discovering the ancient mysteries on the shining isle of her birth and her life as a bard student at the Druidic College on the Isle of Mona, sacred to the druids and priestesses and the site of much destruction by the Romans in 60 AD.

With a masterful hand reminiscent of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series (The Mists of Avalon, Lady of Avalon, The Forest House (Avalon, Book 2)), Cunningham threads together the Celtic legends of Bran and his sojourn with the women of Tir na mBan, the sea diety, Manannán mac Lir, and the Banshee (bean sídhe) with the historical facts of Mona's destruction as related by the Roman Tacitus (Complete Works of Tacitus), the ensuing rise of the Iceni tribeswoman Boudica and archeological facts gleaned from the discovery of Lovernios, the Lindow man, an assumed willing sacrificial victim found preserved after two thousand years in a Manchester bog in 1984 (Life and Death of a Druid Prince.) In addition, with the familiar Judaeo-Christian Bible stories featuring Jesus arguing with the rabbis or being heralded by the dove, or confused by his future mission, she calls to mind the eventual sacrifice that runs like a literary theme throughout all of humanity's cultures from the Greek Dionysus to the Egyptian Osiris and the pain it brings to those closest to it.

This idea of sacrifice entwined with duty comes up often--Cunningham's Lovernios character like that of Ross and Robins' Bog Man, fears the encroaching power of Rome. Intrigued by the advent of the foreign teenage Jesus called Esus by the druids of the college after one of a trio of gods later invoked to aid the Celts in their struggle with Roman intervention, Lovernios decides that Jesus will make a fitting sacrifice. Cunningham authentically and expertly includes the real practice of the Druids where in order to insure a good harvest or good tidings a willing sacrificial victim was selected for a ritual death at Beltaine or Maytime by the use of a lottery where a burned barley griddle cake was torn into fragments, and placed in a sack. Each candidate for sacrifice would withdraw a piece where the burnt piece marked the loser.

But no reader of this stirring story told with Maeve's no-holes-barred exuberance could ever be a loser. The intermingling of different cultural myths sings the need for a savior and Cunningham delivers the goods, in not one package, but two. I look forward to reading the rest of this most interesting take on the Jesus/Mary Magadelen relationship told from such a fresh perspective. Brava, Ms. Cunningham.

Bottom line: In Magdalen Rising: The Beginning, Elizabeth Cunningham does a fine job of creating a heroine worthy of being the focus of a bard's tale. Feisty and irrepressible, Maeve, or Mary Magdalen struggles with her identity like any burgeoning adult while she rises out of the realm of myth to become a viable flesh and blood woman that walks at the side of Christ. This the first of a four-part series tells of Maeve's birth, childhood and meeting with Jesus at the Druid's College on the sacred Ynys Mon. Told from the perspective of a Mary Magdalen that speaks in a modern voice, the novel depicts many thoroughly researched aspects of Celtic life and gives a universal voice to ideas of love, freedom and sacrifice. Highly recommended although with the caveat for those who are not open-minded to fictions depicting Jesus in any other venue than that detailed in the Gospels.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc

This was a wonderful read. I am so glad that there are authors out there who can write novels as brilliant as this. East meets West, God meets Goddess and man meets woman. Classic, enthralling, complicated, mysterious and utterly wonderful. Thank you Mrs. Cunningham.

Dorothy Arida

Amazing, life altering, heart opening and damn hilarious, heart wrenching and incredibly powerful.
A story well told...
I recommend reading the entire trilogy of the Maeve Chronicles as well as anything else you can get your hands on by Elizabeth Cunningham. Also, google her and check out her website and blog!