The Sarsen Witch [Print on Demand (Paperback)]

EILEEN KERNAGHAN (Author)

Product Details

• Print on Demand (Paperback): 240 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Pr (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809571579
• ISBN-13: 978-0809571574
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,714,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I grew on a dairy farm outside Grindrod, B.C., Canada, population 600. A solitary child, I worked my way
several times through the family bookshelves -- Greek myths, Jack London, G.A Henty's ripping yarns, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Book of the Month Club bodice rippers. And then one day I came across my uncle's musty collection of Weird Tales and Thrilling Wonder Stories. While my contemporaries read Nancy Drew,I was lost in the worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Jack Vance: tales of vanished civilizations, fabulous cities of antiquity, wars and wizardry at the end of time. The moment I stumbled across those yellowing pulp magazines, my future career was decided.

My first published story, written when I was eleven, was a rousing tale about a boy trapper in the north woods. It earned me a byline, a half--page illustration, and a cheque for $12.65.

My first published SF story, "Starcult' (written after a twenty year hiatus) sold to Galaxy magazine. My next two or three stories accumulated so many rejection slips that in despair I decided to write a novel. Remembering my early love affair with lost civilizations, I wrote the first of my "Grey Isles" trilogy, a bronze age fantasy called Journey to Aprilioth. That one, and the next two in the series, Songs from the Drowned Lands and The Sarsen Witch, sold to Ace Books and appeared during the eighties.

Along the way I co-authored a writer's handbook for the pacific northwest, and a non-fiction book on reincarnation and past life experience, Walking After Midnight. Out of the research into Walking After Midnight came my first young adult fantasy, Dance of the Snow Dragon, set in 18th century Bhutan, and based on Tibetan Buddhist mythology. An adult spin-off, "Dragon-Rain", later appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Ninth Annual Collection.

My young adult fantasy The Snow Queen, is a reworking of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale. It gives the story a feminist twist, and incorporates northern shamanism and some elements of the Finnish myth cycle, the Kalevala. The Snow Queen won an Aurora Award for the best English language Canadian novel, and was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association's Children's Book of the Year award. It was followed in 2004 by The Alchemist's Daughter, an historical YA fantasy set in Elizabethan England. My latest adult fantasy is Winter on the Plain of Ghosts: a novel of Mohenjo-daro. Set in the prehistoric Indus Valley, it's an homage to those fabulous cities of antiquity that held me spellbound so many decades ago.

Wild Talent, set in London and Paris circa 1888-89, is my most recent YA historical fantasy, released in 2008. Madame Blavatsky, William Butler Yeats, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Alexandra David Neel all make guest appearances.

What else? I've published fiction and poetry in a variety of magazines and anthologies, both mainstream and speculative, in the U.S. and Canada. I've been a member of a five-woman poetry group called Quintet, and in 1998 we published our first collection, Quintet: Themes and Variations. Some of those poems also appear in my speculative poetry collection Tales From the Holograph Woods (Wattle & Daub Books 2009). I also belong to The Lonely Cry -- a group of west coast SF and fantasy writers who have banded together to promote our work by whatever means we can devise. I conduct two long-established writing workshops in the Vancouver BC area, and for twelve years I ran a used bookstore with my husband Pat. We have three grown children and four grandchildren, and live in New Westminster B.C. (next door to Vancouver) with an eccentric cat.


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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely short novel about how Stonehenge may have come to be, June 22, 2010

By 

Kelly (Fantasy Literature) (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Sarsen Witch (Paperback)

Since her family was killed by the invading horse lords, Naeri has lived a wild and solitary existence, surviving on what she can scrounge or steal. But when she is caught trying to steal a pig, she is caught back up again in "civilized" life. She falls in love with Gwi, a kindly smith, and rediscovers a long-lost cousin, the minstrel Daui, who senses in Naeri a gift for geomancy. Then she catches the eye of the local warlord, Ricca, who believes she will bring him good fortune and that her earth-magic abilities can help him build a great monument to immortalize himself.

The Sarsen Witch takes place in Bronze Age Britain and centers on the building of Stonehenge and how it affects the horse tribes and the Goddess-worshiping peoples they have conquered. We see these events through the eyes of Naeri, who begins as something of a pawn and develops strength as the novel progresses. It can be frustrating watching her get pushed around, but it's really gratifying when she does grow a backbone. She must strike a difficult balance between duty and emotion, and between her wish to help her own people and her determination to honor the vows she has made.

The theme feels a bit dated now, since at this point there are many novels exploring the possible conflict between patriarchal and matriarchal tribes in prehistory. 1989, though, was a different landscape altogether. And Eileen Kernaghan presents an unusually nuanced view of the subject matter. The story suggests that a "live and let live" peace is at least theoretically possible, if extremely difficult and unlikely. Ricca, who could easily have been a one-dimensional lout, is surprisingly complex as well, especially when considering the brevity of the novel. (The 1989 edition of The Sarsen Witch weighs in at 217 pages.)

I recommend The Sarsen Witch to readers who enjoyed Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon; in fact, it's easy to imagine Naeri and Morgaine inhabiting the same semi-fictional universe, albeit separated by many centuries. Kernaghan brings to life a time about which little is known, and illuminates it with beautiful language:

"It was the Winter Queen who, by custom, led the women of Ricca's camp. Naeri had danced like this as a child in the hills, under the white stars and the hunting moon. The pulse of the drums was in her blood; her body swayed, her feet moved in remembered rhythms. The reed-pipes made a high, sweet music, clear and silvery; moon-music. In her head the mead sang like the pipes; her blood pounded in time to the drum's insistent throbbing. There were two great circles now, spinning in opposite directions. Faces were blurred ovals flashing past her as she whirled and stamped. Winter-bride, moon-dancer, she leaped like the flames on the hill, swayed like a young rowan in the wind."

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars mesmerizing Bronze Age thriller, February 10, 2008

By 

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

This review is from: The Sarsen Witch (Print on Demand (Paperback))

The Dark Folk, the Ancient people, the Witch People have all been subjugated to the hors-lords. Those not enslaved hide deep in the hills out of fear of captivity. Naeri of the House of the Lady Ashton of the Albur clan hid in the mountains and caves alone foraging for food from the enemy. Eventually she is caught and brought before Chief Ricca to be punished for theft.

She is saved by the smith Gwi, who takes her on as his apprentice though he wants much more form her. The minstrel of the tribe is hers cousin Daui who helps her find a magician who teaches Naeri how to use the stones and earth magic. Once she becomes proficient with its use, Daui directs Ricca and his men to construct a stone circle as a memorial to him at a place where the leylines are numerous and power is stored like a battery. After it is built, Naeri will use her prowess as a geomancer to bring down the horse lords and their tribes. Although frightened Naeri feels obligated to her kin, but believes no good will come of her mission.

THE SARSEN WITCH is a mesmerizing reading experience that depicts life in the Bronze Age of what will eventualy become Britain. Naeri is a survivor who will allows herself to be pushed so far before she goes her own way. It is fascinating to observe how Ricca holds the various horse tribes together using threats and gifts (today we call it an earmark) to keep everyone in line; he is not a bad leader just a product of his time as he is not interested in the welfare of those he conquered (today we call them democrats).

Harriet Klausner