Magdalene.org Book Review
by Lesa Bellevie
Daughter of the Shining Isles, by Elizabeth Cunningham (Barrytown Ltd., June 2000)
[Note: This title was re-released as Magdalen Rising: The Beginning (The Maeve Chronicles). The review that follows was written prior to the re-release and refers to the original title.]
Daughter of the Shining Isles is the first part of an ambitious trilogy by Elizabeth Cunningham. She takes us to the
Celtic-speaking world of 9 C.E. where the main character,
Maeve Rhaud, is born and raised by eight weather-warrior witches on the
island of Tir na
mBam. There, she has a startling vision of her cosmic twin, Esus, in a back
alley of
Jerusalem: he is relieving his bladder.
If this is a startling image for you, then you should avoid the book.
Cunningham's Maeve
Rhaud is a headstrong, earthy character with no qualms about speaking of
bodily functions,
and she does so with great frequency. They are, in fact, important plot
points in the
story. This was a great drawback for me when I first started the book, and
it wasn't until
I was halfway through it that I decided the story was entertaining enough to
compensate for
Cunningham's Celtic witches' apparent scatalogical fascination.
A majority of the story takes place at the legendary Druid college of Mona,
where Maeve
Rhaud undertakes bardic training. The author accounts for the "lost years"
of Jesus (Esus)
by placing him in the college with her. He has a difficult time believing
that his cosmic
twin is someone so "unclean," and they have frequent theological arguments
about monotheism
versus her polytheistic ways. Maeve is constantly in trouble with the
faculty of the
college, clashing with personalities and breaking taboos. It is in this
setting that she
falls in love with the 15 year old man from Jerusalem and pledges her life
to him.
Cunningham's novel is narrated by Maeve, who uses modern metaphors to
describe the events in
her tale. In spite of this chronological inconsistency, the story is
extremely entertaining
and told with good humor. It moves along quickly, and the main characters
are well
developed. If you are familiar with biblical accounts of the life of Jesus,
you will be
amused by the references to how his legend was shaped by people after his
death.
If you're able to laugh at bawdy humor and don't have an easily tweaked
sense of the
blasphemous, this book will leave you satisfied and waiting eagerly for the
next novel in
the series.
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