I have enjoyed this book like few others I have read. Professor Bates sucks the reader through a time tunnel into the world of Dark Age (for lack of a better term) Britain, which figured heavily in the world J. R. R. Tolkien tried to create. But this book isn't about that so much, as it is about the evidence we have about the belief system of the Germanic and Celtic peoples of pre-Christian and very early-Christian Britain. This was a belief system where the world was connected by an invisible thread... event to event... person to person... element to element, and where magic was around every corner, behind every tree or rock, within every hill. I read it a chapter at a time, before bed, and I found myself looking forward all day long to the next trip to Middle Earth. This isn't meant to be a point-by-point historical study, although it is helpful for someone like myself who wants to understand the mindset of people in the era (I'm a writer doing research). Rather, it's an attempt to paint a picture of the world as the early English saw it, to allow the reader to see it through their eyes, and maybe appreciate and learn from their point of view. I wanted the book to go on forever.
As a writer doing research into this era (and I have been reading extensive scholarly and historical sources on the era over about a 25 year period - it's an obsession!) I really appreciated the notes on each chapter and the sources Professor Bates was using. They are ones I would have used to try and put such a book together... and that could not have been an easy task.
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
