This is a story with a twist that follows 3 people. There
is Linda, wife, mother, photography graduate setting out to make her life work.
She doesn’t have a perfect marriage and even her photographs have odd, phantom
images, but she is making it work, alongside Pascal a university professor who
asks her to work with him to write his book as they bother become enamoured
with each other.
Then there’s Nina, photographer though plagued with
phantom images in her work. She’s supported by good friends and neighbours, but
her life falls into chaos when her ex-lover returns out of the blue with
hurried instructions that they have to flee to New Mexico – after goons try to
kidnap her and nearly kill her friend.
And Pascal, devout Catholic, still reeling from his divorce and fighting his deep affection and growing love for Linda and then Nina. And he’s carrying a passenger, the pagan god Cernunnos, god of lust and fertility who is constantly pushing him away from his rigid morality.
Then there’s the Trickster. A powerful god he has taken
an interest in the characters – and definitely has his own agenda.
This book was a real rollercoaster for me. When it
started, I loved it. I loved the concepts, I loved the switching to the three
main characters/time periods and was eager to see how they fitted together. I
wanted to see the conflict between the Trickster and Cernunnos and what it
meant for Pascal that he was carrying such a supernatural passenger. And the
characters themselves were complex and flawed with major issues in their lives
that seemed like they were going to be addressed – like Linda and her deeply flawed
relationship, Pascal and his wrongheaded policing of his wife’s sexuality. Nina
being torn between her mysterious lover and her deep abiding loyalty to her
friends.
And the story started well – we had a brief introduction and then Nina’s life was suddenly thrown into chaos. Goons were chasing her, her lover had a god in his mind, her best friend was in hospital with a bullet in his chest and she was hurrying to Santa Fe to try and find some answers to the chaos that had suddenly over taken her life.
An excellent start.
Then it kind of petered out. The supernatural took a huge
step back, occasionally appearing as a voice in Pascal’s head but otherwise it
became a story of the mundane. Pascal and Nina taking a road trip, with their
growing sexual tension and conflict with Pascal’s rigid morality. And memories
of Pascal and Linda working together on his book, spending time together, growing
every closer and always with that underlying tension of his attraction and
affection meeting his morality and
It was decent, but it was a mundane tale, the magic and the mystery seemed to have become lost, even the reason for the road trip seemed to fallen by the wayside. And I had no idea how Linda was supposed to fit into the narrative or why introducing Linda and Nina was supposed to solve any of the problems Nina was facing. There was a lot of foreshadowing laid out and a lot of character development. We were introduced to many of the characters that added so much texture and depth to Pascal’s life and Linda became a fully formed person. But I was still lost and kind of wondering what I was reading and why.
Then, at about 60% things began to fall into place again.
A lot of major action picked up, some major themes were developed – including the
ongoing powerful theme of environmental and the major consequences of that –
especially in relation to healthy children being born. All of the little
foreshadowing elements of Pascal and Cernunnos’s life came together to make the
Trickster’s grievance very real and understandable. Things happened, there were
grand revelations, all of the foreshadowing was suddenly wonderfully clear –
and then we get the grand revelation of Linda and Nina. I cannot spoil it
without completely ruining the book – but it brings a whole new level of themes
and concepts to the book and turns what happened before completely on its head.
The last quarter of the book went extremely quickly, with
the cards laid on the table it was back to being an excellent, fascinating read
with very complex characters with a lot of major issues and concepts to explore
and an exciting, intriguing story that pulled me back in and the whole book up
to its previous heights. The full extent of the Trickster’s game was revealed
and the major choices facing the characters now became ever clearer as well as
the smaller game Cernunnos had been playing in his own circle.
I think there were a lot of issues that were touched on
in this book and, in varying ways, challenged and resolved. Pascal’s sexism in
demanding his wife not use birth control then being upset that she lied to him
was fiercely challenged by Linda and Nina. Linda’s shaky relationship with her
husband frequently had his bad behaviour and even bullying referred to as what
it was. The issues of consent with using Pascal’s body for sex between Nina and
Cernunnos was another one touched on – as was the concept of consent and
Cernunnos’s powers of lust and attraction.
