Witchlight [Hardcover]

Marion Zimmer Bradley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

Seeking help in discovering the secrets of her past, Winter Musgrave turns to Truth Joudemayne and learns that she must reconstruct the magickal circle of friends she had in college to end the evil surrounding her and save her life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of Bradley's popular Darkover series and The Mists of Avalon will recognize familiar plot elements in this contemporary fantasy quest, a successor to Ghostlight (1995). Heroine Winter Musgrave, 36, awakens terrified one morning in a mysterious old rural New York farmhouse, unable to recall more than flashes of her former life as a Manhattan stockbroker. Seeking relief from malevolent paranormal phenomena that she seems to be causing, Winter approaches Truth Jourdemayne, a psychic researcher who appeared in Ghostlight, for help. With Truth's guidance, Winter gradually regains her memory and faces horrors within and without as she crisscrosses the country to track down the members of her college amateur magical circle. By reforging the group's spiritual bonds, Winter hopes to exorcise her demons and to save her lover. Bradley poses insights into modern deviltry?the psychological consequences of abortion, child and spouse abuse; dysfunctional families; stress-filled urban life?by implicitly contrasting them with the traditional, spirituality balanced Celtic Otherworld, said to coexist with concrete reality. Lacking the absorbing history and environment of Arthurian legend or of the alien planet Darkover, however, Winter's struggle to come of age as a psychic woman warrior lacks vigor, though Bradley still can spin a wicked web of tangled relationships and motivations.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In yet another masterful story, Bradley gives us Winter Musgrave, a young woman who cannot remember her past and seeks to reconstruct her blank life with the aid of old friends. This excellent novel of self-discovery belongs in most sf collections of contemporary magic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312861044
• ISBN-13: 978-0312861049
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,384,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marion Eleanor Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67.
She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to VORTEX SCIENCE FICTION. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels and for her Arthurian novel, THE MISTS OF AVALON.
In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called SWORD AND SORCERESS, which is still published annually under the title MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY'S SWORD AND SORCERESS.
She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars spine-chilling, true to life tale of the unseen world..., January 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Witchlight (Paperback)

although some of those reviewing this book did not seem to appreciate it,i feel this stems from a lack of understanding or interest in the occult...i found it brilliant...once again bradley portrays this modern day story of magick as it truly is, and i can appreciate it being a "witch" myself...winter musgrave is released from a mental hospital with a bad case of amnesia...she seems incapable of remembering even why she was admitted there...what she is aware of is that strange things are happening to her...small animals are found mutilated upon her doorstep, windows and doors have a way of being opened when she remembers locking them, and all manner of strange things happen when she becomes upset or angry...she has given up her wall street high-paying job to rent an old house called grey angels...the incidents are getting worse...instead of getting the peace of mind she seeks, she finds herself spiraling toward oblivion...is she doing the bad things and forgetting them or is she being stalked by something more horrible than her nightmares???...an act of desperation lands her at a college that has its own parapsychology team...can truth jourdemayne help winter fight off this evil???...challenging enough without having to convince winter of her sanity first...gradually throughout this exciting book winter is regaining her memory and realizing that she might would have preferred the lack of it to the truth...her revelations put her on a road trip across the country trying to figure out what happened to the missing piece of her life's puzzle...and the answers are so unpredictable that you will be gasping until the very end when you learn that love conquers all...thank you marion zimmer bradley!!!!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slow starter, but keep reading, December 27, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Witchlight (Paperback)

I've never been more tempted to put a book down after the first fifty pages as I was when I began reading this book. Bradley is one of my favorite authors and the biggest draw about her novels is their remarkable ability to keep you engrossed in the text. The beginning of this book, however is a completely different story. You go through the motions along with the main character, winding your way through the broken and patchy memories of an inconsistant past. Who wants to go through that? Even though you might be tempted to give up and move on to something else, stick with it. The end result will please you. As the memories slowly begin their emergence, the novel becomes more and more inticing, with the whispers of forgotten friends calling through the haze to reach you. Anyone who is a fan of Bradley's gothic storytelling will not be sorry that they read this. I know your not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but don't judge this one by the first fifty pages or so.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Magickal Child, September 6, 2001

By 

K. Fromal "kristinof" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Witchlight (Paperback)

Winter Musgrave loves her work as a high-powered trader on Wall Street. The only problem is, she can't seem to remember her life before her job. And then, when animals drained of their blood start showing up in her path, she believes that she is losing her mind.
After a psychiatric clinic fails to help her, she turns to the Bidney Institute, a resource center for parapsychology. Despite her disbelief, she begins to trust in the researchers. They find that Winter's problems are stemming from what they call a "magickal child," and believe that she must recreate a Blackburn circle that she was a part of in college in order to rid herself of the unwanted occurrences.
I found the plot of this book to be intruiging and fast-moving - probably the best in Bradley's *Light series. At points my lack of knowledge of occult or parapsychological phenomena hindered my understanding, however that is not a fault of the author but of my limited knowledge. I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in parapsychological phenomena.