Customer Reviews

Walking to Mercury

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Spiral Dance has to be one of the inspirational books of the last century, and Dreaming the Dark continued with the same evocative quality. Then I read The Fifth Sacred Thing and decided that, interesting though it was, it didn't delineate Starhawk as a gifted novelist. How wrong could I be! Walking to Mercury is one of the most lyrical yet gripping books I've ever read. I found it impossible to put down. Every sentence is carefully crafted, every word a jewel strung together with a luminous spirituality. The way Starhawk contrasts and yet draws parallels between the hippy, drug oriented anti war climate of sixties and seventies America and the soaring purity of eighties Nepal, the Goddess pagan culture and Tibetan Buddhism is nothing short of brilliant. There is not a weak section or mundane sentence in the whole book. I shall now go back and read and enjoy The Fifth Sacred Thing with fresh insight.
Elen Hawke author of In The Circle, The Sacred Round and Praise to the Moon

I have been an admirer of Starhawk's work since I read The Spiral Dance in 1987. Although largely ignored by mainstream progressives, her work does a great deal to extend the revolutionary ideals of the '60's and '70's into spirituality, psychology and culture. I have great respect for her as an author and leader.

However, I feel her greatest talent for communicating her message lies in non-fiction rather than fiction. The poetry and lyricism of her ideas and insights come through much more clearly.

To be blunt, although the magic comes through in bits and pieces, the book is also a more or less stereotyped visit to '60's activism. I also felt there was a lack of depth to the character development. Sure, there's a lot of "action," plot, but a real sense of knowing, or perhaps caring, about these people was missing for me.

Also, given that Starhawk is also a '60's activist who has become a leader and visionary of the Goddess revival, it's hard not to see Maya as a thinly veiled version of herself. Evidently Starhawk doesn't want this, but if she didn't want Maya to be taken as a stand-in for her, she would have been better off creating a character with a different history. It was harder to take Maya as a character with a life of her own, when I couldn't help but feel this was all too strongly filtered through Starhawk's own life.

I do tend to agree with the "Gen X" reviewer who was exasperated with the characters' self-centeredness. For one thing, I didn't like the vision of relationships with no fidelity or commitment. Johanna's statement "I'm not a one-woman dog" just seemed cold and selfish to me. Where's the love?

Well, I realize this all sounds negative, especially next to those glowing reviews. My advice is still to read Starhawk's earlier, non-fiction work. You'll have a much more powerful sense of what the novels are trying, often with less success, to say.

I'm sure I'm in the minority when I say this, but I liked this better than The Fifth Sacred Thing. That book was about a future utopia/dystopia, which was entertaining, but this book was about the here and now, which made it so much more relevant. This book is all about personal transformation, evolving spirituality, dealing with disappointment, overcoming hardship, and the realities of families and friends. I loved the juxtoposition of time, and her descriptions of Nepal were so beautiful and vivid that I felt as if I'd actually visited the place by the time I was finished reading. Brava!

In reality I would need two different ratings to give this book it's proper review. I read it after reading "The Fifth Sacred Thing", which I liked, though with some reservations. I personally did not care for "Walking to Mercury", however I can see that someone who grew up in the same generation as Maya probably would. As our major character she is very caught up in the times and the culture of the '60's, and anyone who was familiar with the '60's and sympathetic to that variety of idealism would probably find it very good reading.

Unfortunately for my enjoyment I come from another generation down the line (born in 1969). The baby-busters. Known briefly as Generation X, until the advertisers realized there weren't enough of us to bother with, and started using the term to refer to the baby-boomlet that occured right afterwards (hence proving the point the name was coined to highlight). For me, Maya Greenwood the crone in "The Fifth Sacred Thing" was an enjoyable character. Unfortunately the same person in her 20's and 30's just made me want to shake her because she was being so blasted stupid. The sheer pointlessness of Maya's entire "spiritual journey" up until 3/4's of the way through the book made me want to scream. I was simply struck by the self-aggrandizement, selfishness, and ultimate pointlessness of most of the behavior of most of the characters in the book. It's very hard to like even a well written book, when you don't like most of the people in it.

The book does redeem itself somewhat towards the end. You get inklings of how Maya begins to deepen into the far more interesting person she is by "The Fifth Sacred Thing", and her relationships begin to metamorphose into something more worthwhile - just about the time the book ends. So not entirely awful, but mostly for those who lived the 1960's.

I'd never read any of Starhawk's work before. So to read this, with no preconceived ideas about the characters, served me well. It was inspirational, reading of Maya, and of her journey (both personal and spiritual). This book changed my life, and has called me to travel to Nepal, simply to experience the places that were described so vividly in this book.

It's the amazing journey of one woman.

"Walking to Mercury" added depth and soul to "The Fifth Sacred Thing." After reading this latest addition, I reread "The Fifth Sacred Thing" and appreciated it so much more. Rio became a real person rather than a mysterious ghost. I developed great admiration for Maya, the Crone, after knowing her as a young woman who is learning from her mistakes, suffering, living life. It's a story about real people and Starhawk's portrayal makes the reader care about them.

Starhawk portrayal of the evolution of our society in this book increased the credibility of her vision of the future in the other. The novel also explained how Maya came to hold so many of her viewpoints later.

If you enjoyed "The Fifth Sacred Thing," you'll like learning more about the characters in it. If you haven't read it, this book stands alone quite well -- but you'll probably be drawn to read the other because you want to know what happens next. Since many of the characters in "The Fifth Sacred Thing" are descendents of those in "Walking Toward Mercury," reading one contributed to the experience of reading the other. However, the two novels have a different voice entirely despite the common characters. I enjoyed both.

In summary, "Walking Toward Mercury" is an outstanding novel set in the present that beautifully portrays a fictional yet very real life.

I really enjoyed the collage of reading Maya's current journey to try and reconnect with her sister along with the journal entries and letters from her lover and long ago boyfriend. I would have liked to see more references to magic and the time she spent in NY with Sylvia but still found the book very satisfying. I devoured it in a matter of days. I wish that there was more fiction out there that was written about modern day pagans and witches. I did like the fifth Sacred Thing (especially the Melissa) but found it a bit too sci-fi. Maybe thats why I really liked watching the transformation of Maya from a Maiden to a pre-crone. Yet still searching for truths and connectedness. I would highly recommend this book.

I absolutely loved _The Fifth Sacred Thing_, so I figured I would love this too. The stories are very different, almost not of the same genre, and I appreciated them for many different reasons. While "Fifth" is a utopian novel, this one was so real that I had to remind myself that it was not a biography of an amazing woman. Maya was more real in this story, not a vision of perfection. Like other readers, I anxiously await more novels involving these characters.

Having devoured "The Fifth Sacred Thing", I was eager to learn more of Maya (or any other of the major characters). This current effort however, needed a much less timid editor. There are at least 100 pages too many, and the message and story got lost repeatedly in the details. I have not finished Walking To Mercury yet; I needed a break. I did like the story, and will finish one day, but I found myself wanting to know less, not more..

Unlike many, I have never read any of Starhawk's nonfiction books, so I came to Fifth Sacred Thing, which I read first, knowing only that the author was a practicing witch and psychologist, but not burdened with ideology. So I was able to read both novels without comparing them to anything else the author had written. I won't go on about Fifth Sacred Thing here, since this is a review for Walking To Mercury, but I will say I really loved that book and was excited when I saw there was another novel with the same character.

I was really impressed with the way Starhawk presented Maya's beginnings and her journey toward spiritual wholeness. I am about a decade too young to have been involved in the 60s changes, so a lot of what was described was new to me. I followed Maya's journey with great interest and felt that the author did an excellent job of showing the steps the character took to get to where she was in Fifth Sacred Thing. In fact, after I read Walking To Mercury, I instantly reread Fifth Sacred Thing. I love the character of Maya and was happy to read on about her. I don't know that Starhawk will ever write another novel, but if she does, I will definitely read it.