By Elizabeth Hand; reviewed by Jeannette Hartman
Katherine “Sweeney” Cassidy lasted one semester at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine before being expelled. But it was enough.
Enough to meet the dazzling Angelica di Rienzi and fall in love with the feyly attractive Oliver Wilde Crawford in her “Magic, Witchcraft and Religion” class taught by Balthazar Warnick in the fabulous Rossetti Hall.
Enough to be told about the Benandanti, currently led by Warnick himself, by Anjelica, whose own family had been members since the Renaissance.
Enough to witness the Benandanti hurl an enemy into an infinite wasteland and to see them harness the supernatural for their own agenda.
Sweeney should have gone to a college closer to home. But with a scholarship she can escape to Washington D.C. and the exotic campus of the Divine, where buildings are huge and Gothic, “vine-hung, sweet with the carnal scent of wisteria blossoms. Beneath (their) walls wandered a weird profusion of nuns and rabbis, sikhs and friars, and others of even more dubious spiritual provenance: Hare Krishnas, earnest Moonies, witches and druids nouveaux. The effect was superbly and spookily medieval, with color and comic relief thrown in by a small but noisy undergraduate population bearing the last battered standards of 1960s gambado.”
At the heart of this dark tale is a war between the Benandanti, who launched a cultural explosion 7,000 years ago, according to Angelica, and worshippers of the goddess Othiym Lunarsa.
Othiym is no gentle, nurturing goddess, however. She is vicious, demanding and blood-thirsty. Angelica becomes a follower, willing to make any sacrifice for the power the goddess confers.
This is a spooky, atmospheric novel, a perfect read for the Halloween season.
Author Elizabeth Hand tends to overdo academic-style passages about the goddess. But she is such a good writer you’ll hang in even while Sweeney turns from a wild child into a staid civil servant at the National Museum of Natural History. Her skills also help you set aside questions like: why was Sweeney even accepted at the Divine? Why are the Benandanti still so male-dominated? Why is Othiym so mean?
Flaws not withstanding, this is a good book for darkening, spooky autumn evenings.
The Author: Elizabeth Hand (1957 – )
Elizabeth Hand is the best-selling author of genre-spanning novels and collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received many Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among others, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books.
Among her novels are HOKULOA ROAD; the Cass Neary series including GENERATION LOSS, AVAILABLE DARK, HARD LIGHT and THE BOOK OF LAMPS AND BANNERS; and WYLDING HALL.
She studied drama and anthropology at The Catholic University of America.
In addition to writing novels and short stories, she writes movie and television spin-offs, including “Star Wars” tie-in novels and novelizations of such films as “The X-Files” and “12 Monkeys.”
She is a longtime reviewer and critic for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, Salon and Village Voice among others. She also writes a column for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
She divides her time between coastal Maine and Camden Town, England.
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