Met By Moonlight [Mass Market Paperback]

Rosemary Edghill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1998

When modern day witch Diana Crossways plunges back to 1647 England, she learns that a mysterious man she saw in Salem, Massachusetts is a notorious witch hunter. He holds the power of life and death over Diana--but she also inflames his desire. .

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Pinnacle (February 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786004827
• ISBN-13: 978-0786004829
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,802,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Grand Sabbat, February 23, 2002

By 

Sires "I enjoy mysteries, historical and proc... (Chesapeake, OH, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Met By Moonlight (Mass Market Paperback)

Ok, the title was to get your attention, hopefully it worked. Edghill's novel is a historical novel, a romance and a work of fiction. Don't expect too much from it, but also don't reject it out of hand because it has the word romance attached. It is no less well written than her Bast mysteries or her science fiction and fantasy.

Diana Crossways (yes, Diana of the Crossroads is one of the aspects the Wiccan Goddess) was alone in her small pagan bookstore in Salem Massachusetts, when a mysterious motorcycle courier delivers a package in the middle of a thunderstorm on October 31. When she opens the package she discovers that it is a valuable three hundred-year-old, handwritten grimoire with no information as to why she had received it or what she was to do with it. Just as she is examining the book there is a bolt of lightning that blows the electricity, then another that send her spinning into the storm. But when she can see and hear again, she is not in Salem. She is in a midnight, summer wood under a full moon, confronting a mysterious and attractive figure who both attracts and repels her.

She flees and stumbles into a coven of witches, who take her for a visitor from inside the Hollow Hills, a creature of faery, because of her mysterious and foreign appearance. They identify the book she is still clutching as the grammarie they had given to one of their members who had been slain four years ago. She is invited on the strength of this as well as her pagan jewelry to join in their ceremony.

One of the members, Abigail Fortune, undertakes to provide shelter for her, naming Diana her niece Anne Mallow, come from London. Abigail further gives Diana with the information that she is no longer in 20th century Massachusetts, but 17th century England. Oliver Cromwell has taken King Charles I in keeping and the Puritans are changing the face of religion in England. More specifically, Matthew Hopkins, the self appointed witchfinder general, with his companions, John Sterne and Mary Phillips (the Three Unspotted Lambs of the Lord) are on the prowl seeking out malignants (witches) to be destroyed to the Greater Glory of the Lord and the financial gain of the witchfinders.

While Diana waits outside the village of Talitho, hoping another turn of the seasons would allow her to return to her own world and wondering who the mysterious figure is she had seen on her first entrance to the 17th century, unseen forces set in motion events that draw Matthew Hopkins to this small village in rural England.

When Hopkins arrives, he brings not just his companions, Sterne and Phillips, but also a man known as Upright-Before-the-Lord Makepeace who seems more a prisoner than a willing servant. Upright-Before-the-Lord is Hopkin's hell hound, a creature he regards as less than human, redeemed by Hopkins from damnation, used by him to hunt down those true Wiccans whose presence give his lies about innocent people (made in order to bolster his credibility and line his pockets) some credibility. In reality, Upright is a creature of the fog and the shadow and the night, bound hopelessly to Hopkins, but seeing in Diana his destiny.

How Hopkins tries to destroy Diana and the coven who welcomed her and how Upright struggles against Hopkins' conditioning in an effort to protect her make this book more than a romance. It's a historical fantasy novel dealing with one of the more interesting sidelines of English history.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Historically interesting, yet fraught with heaving bosoms, June 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Met By Moonlight (Mass Market Paperback)

I was never a fan of historical romance novels, and now I remember why. Met by Moonlight, an intriguing novel that explores the often-overlooked Burning Times in Europe, reminded me of the ubermovie "Titanic": thoroughly engaging history, marred by irritating lovers you just wanted to shove out of the way of the true drama. Author Rosemary Edghill has obviously done her homework on this tragic era, yet when the story line turned to the traditional heaving bosom and throbbing loins of the star-crossed lovers, the book lost its edge. The romantic scenes seemed almost obligatory, wedged in and detracting from the book's more engaging plot line.

This novel came highly recommended by pagans and witches for its representation of the true practice of magic (healing and honoring nature); as a witch, I was very impressed with its accuracy and details. If you'd like to learn more about the Burning Times and witchcraft from a source more informal than a textbook, this is one novel to check out. But watch out for that sweat-soaked couple in the foreground.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique and wonderful book., April 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Met By Moonlight (Mass Market Paperback)

It was this novels very uniqueness that drew me to it in the first place and I was never disappointed. From the name of the hero, Upright Before the Lord Makepeace to the haunting plot sets the novel asside from the traditional romance novel. Rosemary Edghill explores witchcraft and brain washing in her latest novel Met By Moonlight. I can only say I wish there were more like it. This is one for the keeper shelf.