Woman of Fire

by Deborah Grabien

The young wife of a druid priest living on the ancient English moor accidentally rips a hole in time and contacts Marian, the modern-day wife of a London stockbroker

Genres: Mystery

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1988

About the author

Deborah Grabien is a world traveller, retired medieval historian, and lifelong rocker chick. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays can be seen in many diverse venues.

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took awhile to read this book because I didn't have much spare time. I liked the interesting plot and how the characters meshed together, combining past and present and a little magic. I'm going to keep this book and read it again in the future!

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

EYES IN THE FIRE (Para/Susp-Marian and Justin Dunne-England-Cont/Ancient Times – G+
Grabien, Deborah – Standalone
St. Martin’s Press, 1998, US Hardcover – ISBN: 0312033362

First sentence: A light rain was falling on the M4, misting the road signs and slicking the asphalt.

Marian and Julian Dunne have lived at Four Shields in Dartmoor for ten years. One a sunny day, Marian is in the kitchen when she is overcome by smoke but finds there is no trace of it once she recovers. Several days later, Julian falls asleep on the moors above the house. When he awakes, he finds his hand has been badly burned. Lun is a young Bronze-Age woman with unusual yellow eyes, married to a lower Druid priest. She senses power within herself and chafes at her tribes ruling that women may not wear priest robes. She sees the shade of an oddly dressed woman and believes it to be her goddess, while Julian fears for Marian’s safety as he sees physical transformations in her, including a yellowing of her eyes.

There were some very good aspects to this book, the biggest being the level of suspense which starts at the beginning and carries all the way through. Grabien also provides an excellent sense of place, both in the past and in the present.The characters are well drawn and, for the most part, sympathetic. Dialogue is tricky; in present day it was fine but when you consider there is no way to represent Bronze Age dialogue with any degree of accuracy yet neither is it so discordant as to be annoying. Then there’s the plot. It is engrossing, interesting and fascinating to speculate until the ending.

I understand where she was going with the ending but I also felt she’d rather written herself into a corner and didn’t know any other way to get out of it. For me, a different ending would have made a much more satisfying book. I very much enjoy Grabien’s “Haunted Ballad” series. However, this was Grabien’s first book and, in some ways, it shows.

[Ralph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This first novel by the now-well-established author Deborah Grabien is something of an old-fashioned story in that none of the themes are new to the supernatural mystery genre -- a lonely house, a haunted land, inexplicable phenomena and the intrusion of ancient darkness into the modern world. However, she handles those plot elements extremely well, and then adds an extra dimension...the intrusion of the modern world into a benighted antiquity. By shifting between narrative threads, one modern, the other ancient, she achieves a much higher level of suspense and anxiety, setting both worlds on a cataclysmic collision course. The strength of the novel is not to be found in any of those elements, however, but in the breadth and depth of her characters. While not a great novel, it is nonetheless very good, and well worth tracking down, especially if your forte is suspense fiction fraught with supernatural dangers.

[Debra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grabien's first novel presages some of her future themes, specifically Old Religion/supernatural influences in a murder. This book, however, doesn't show the finesse of her ballad series.