12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rollicking rip-snorting yarn! A terrific read!, February 14, 2002
This review is from: Soul Flame (Onyx) (Paperback)
There is never a dull moment in "Soul Flame," the story of Selene, adopted daughter of a healer woman who herself becomes a healer and dedicates herself to furthering the healing arts. Selene is also dedicated to unravelling the mystery of her true identity and discovering her destiny. At sixteen, she falls in love with the handsome Greek physician Andreas but... well that would be telling. This book ranges across many of the key locations of early civilization, and Ms. Wood's prodigious research serves the reader well. In addition to lore on early medicine and herbal cures we are treated to glimpses of exotic early cultures. Leanly written, densely plotted and full of fascinating characters, "Soul Flame" never disappoints. If you are like me, you will be hungering for a sequel when you reach the last page. Let's get this book back into print, and -- Ms. Wood, are you listening? -- let's get started on the sequel. A terrific read!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Epic Quest Set in the Roman Empire, May 13, 2004
The 400+ page saga of Barbara Wood's heroine, Selene, begins with a mysterious birth in the ancient city of Antioch durng the time of the first Caesars of the Roman Empire. Two fugitives, a well-to-do Roman and his in-labor wife, appear on the doorstep of the healing woman, Mera who performs a hasty midwifery minutes before Roman soldiers appear, kill the new father and haul away his wife and baby son. Unbeknownst to them, Mera, hidden in a grain container, has saved the baby daughter and at the bequest of the dying Roman, rears the child, Selene, as her own, teaching her the art of healing while keeping the Roman's ring and the key to Selene's true heritage secreted within an alabaster rose pendant.
As Selene grows into a lovely young woman, Mera's training brings to fruition a competent compassionate healer with a special gift for the medical arts and a curiosity to discover and gather the medical lores and practices of many cultures both familiar and foreign. Her natural inquisitiveness is piqued during a freak accident in the Antioch streets: a donkey driver, hit by the legs of a kicking animal, lies with a head wound in the street. When Selene compels a Greek doctor, Andreas, to treat the wound, she falls helplessly in love with him and together they decide to pool their learning and dedicate their lives to promoting the ancient art of healing while simultaneously alieviating the suffering of the sick. But as such stories usually go, fate intervenes and Selene and Andreas are separated by misunderstanding fueled by outside factors. And as Selene attempts to be reunited with her beloved and find out the secret of her ancestry, she undergoes trials and tribulations that promote her understanding of herself and the human condition.
As with many of her other novels, Barbara Wood uses her own medical knowledge to augment an already interesting story of a young girls advent into womanhood and her quest for self identity. An ample sprinkling of word derivations, herb lore and little known facts about the Roman Empire and its customs which have have germinated into today's traditions, keeps the reader turning the pages intent on discovery Selene's next path and garnering enough information about the ancient world to win the next Trivial Pursuit match.
Many of the turns the novel takes regarding Selene's medical development are predictable. Selene's singlemindedness does not endow her character with much motivation other than to create a clean hospital environment for her future patients. In fact, much of the character motivation is merely brushed upon, relying on a few paragraphs of information to provide emotional background for characters about which I would have prefered drawing conclusions based on actions rather than narration.
The quest for Selene's parentage however is not only predictable---not in terms of whom her parents turn out to be---but in the convenient way the author presents the denouement to this aspect of the novel and Selene's rather immature reaction. Even Selene, as dedicated to her vocation as she was, could not have been this naive as a grown woman. More disappointing was Selene's "reunion" with her twin brother--a rushed scene that sadly takes place within the last 20 pages of a novel that could have afforded at least 100 pages on this very important secondary plot idea. Most horrendous was the incompete tale of Selene's daughter, who leaves Rome to find her own heritage and to whose end, the reader is left without a clue.
The pace of the story hurtles like a snowball gathering momentum downhill. At first, it is just right, but as the novel nears its end, the revelations and happenstances fly by like scenery observed from the window of a high-speed train.
That being said, I still award the story 4 stars for its immense ability to entertain on a very readable level. The reader is never bogged down with excrutiating detail, however I will admit to skipping passages of the character's self-musing simply because I had already gotten the point and didn't need to read every nuance of Selene's painstaking thought development. Recommended to anyone who wants to be entertained by a master storyteller.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
cover-to-cover, April 17, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Soul Flame (Onyx) (Paperback)
I have fallen away from reading over the past several years, and I picked up a copy of this book in a bin at the supermarket... and sitting down to read it had no idea what to expect. I read the entire book in one sitting, cover to cover in one evening... because I couldn't stand to put it down. It was fantastic... a perfect combination of storytelling and education...
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