Customer Reviews

Mystic Rose

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The first thing the reader is struck with when holding a copy of THE MYSTIC ROSE is how beautiful the book itself is. This little paperback treasure is made of high quality heavy stock glossy pages and adorned with gorgeous full color Celtic artwork.

The short story itself is as equally colorful, weaving a tale of ancient Britannic deities, a boy named Tobin from the 21st century, an angel in disguise named Amos, and mythical personages who join forces with the magnanimous (and apparently reformed) 18th century Golden Age pirate captain Samuel Bellamy of the famous Whydah Galley, as they sail aboard the goddess Ariadne's mysterious ship Mystic Rose on a perilous journey through time to bring King Arthur to his new life in Tintagel. The reader will be fascinated to experience the past and present overlap each other, and mindboggled when our ancient heroes suddenly gather in a room of their ship to watch a video recording of what is obviously meant to be Walter Cronkite giving a news report of a press interview with Morgan Le Fey and the Lady of the Lake who are preparing to send King Arthur on his funeral barge.

While some readers might be offended by the story's blending of polytheistic paganism with monotheistic Judaic (biblical) Christianity to the brink of blasphemy, yet it is literarily consistent with all of the classic tales of Arthur, who lived in a time when Catholicism, calling itself "Christianity", began mingling with and finally replacing the "Old Ways" of Britannia. Brooks is obviously well learned in the classic mythology of his homeland. This is serious fiction with a touch of the quirkiness of Douglas Adams (without the slapstick humor). I highly recommend this book.