Official Review: The Druid's Curse by C. J. McWain

[TheMusicalMuse]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Druid's Curse" by C. J. McWain.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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“The Druid’s Curse” by C.J. McWain is impressive in both its literary background and historical research, and it possesses a depth that one doesn’t often find in the realm of fiction. This tale, which spans over a thousand years, begins with the tale of a Druidic Oracle living in Ireland during the height of the Roman Empire. This young lady, Anai, falls in love with Leor, a Celtic outsider, and breaks tradition by sleeping with him. Her intended Druidic husband Laidir is furious at Anai’s betrayal of him and of her people, but he still insists upon marrying her, hoping that his love and his incredible, supernatural gifts will win her affections.

This initial connection between Anai, Leor, and Laidir creates the love triangle around which the rest of the book is based. Upon catching Anai and Leor in each other’s arms, Laidir uses his powers to cast a curse, binding the three of them and dooming them to repeat their story over and over throughout history.

We follow the fated trio first to medieval England, where Laidir appears as Merlin, the powerful sorcerer from the tales of King Arthur. Their next manifestation occurs in Renaissance Italy, followed by a meeting in the untamed wilds of newly discovered America. The tale comes full circle when the three characters meet in modern day Ireland at the site of their original Celtic home.

When I first read the synopsis of this book, my main concern was that the story would become dull as Anai and her two lovers repeated their actions exactly, with only the setting and names changing. My concern was quelled as I read, though. The trio is not just doomed to a cycle of unrequited and illicit love. In each new historical setting, their relationships evolve. We see Laidir become more compassionate toward the man who wronged him, Leor become more resolute not to get involved with a married woman, and Anai become more devoted to her husband, even though her heart and body long for Leor. By the last few pages, I was turning pages quickly, wondering what final decisions the trio would make to land them in a happily ever after.

Another way the author differentiated between each new setting was by altering the style of the prose to reflect the historical time period. For example, when Anai became reborn as Dante, the Italian Renaissance poet, the dialogue reflected the style of Dante’s poetry. This not only required a great deal of flexibility and talent on the part of the writer, it also called for a good deal of research.

As well-researched as this book was, however, in many cases, the research got in the way of the storyline. Especially in the original setting—the Druidic tribe—the author would halt the forward motion of the story to digress about an irrelevant historical item. For instance, there was an entire chapter devoted to the traditional Druid marriage ceremony—a chapter that could have been summed up in two or three sentences with no detriment to the plot.

This is just a small example of the largest issue I had with this book: pacing. The title of the book—The Druid’s Curse—refers to the curse Laidir puts on himself, his wife, and her lover. However, said curse doesn’t even occur until halfway through the 563 page book. The author put a great deal of detail into the first half of the story in an attempt to lay the background for the three lovers’ torment in the rest of the book. Many of the events in the first half of the book were totally unnecessary to the central theme, though, and could easily have been shortened or eliminated.

After such a long, drawn out exposition, the rest of the book came as a shock. The events of the second setting—medieval England—occurred in the space of a couple chapters at most, striking a stark contrast in pacing.
Much of the pacing issue can be attributed to too much auxiliary information. While I appreciate the author’s attention to detail, there are many secondary characters and secondary plot lines that aren’t vital to the forward motion of the story, and by including them, the author bogs the reader down in the process of sorting through the information to find that which is most relevant. I didn’t need to know about the Druidic tribal wars on Caesar, Laidir’s hiding spot for Merlin’s cauldron, or Leor’s first bison hunt to understand the main conflict. When the author and her editor went through the editing process, they could have been more generous with their paring knives.

The other issue I have with this book is chiefly grammatical. The author employs a wide range of vocabulary words, but most of them are misspelled, confused for their homonyms. Some of the most striking examples were the use of “isle” instead of “aisle”, “waive” instead of “wave”, “wrap” in place of “rap”, and “passed” in place of “past”. At first, these cropped up so infrequently that I hadn’t planned on mentioning it in my review. As the book progressed, though, the frequency of these grammatical errors increased, and some more common word usage mistakes cropped up: to vs. too; their, they’re, and there; and your vs. you’re. By the end, I was hoping that the C.J. McWain hadn’t paid an editor to review the whole book, because it seemed that as the story ran long, the editor’s patience ran short.

Overall, the issues of pacing and grammatical fluency stuck in my craw as I read “The Druid’s Curse”. However, neither of these problems take away from the author’s brilliance in research, voice, and character development. All told, I give this book 3 out of 4 stars. “The Druid’s Curse” is very different from the formulaic fiction you see swarming the bookstores these days, and if you have the time to settle in for a long read and the patience to overlook poor word usage, then this book is a wise choice.

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The Druid's Curse
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[zeldas_lullaby]

Great review! I'll probably pass on this one because it's not to my interest (history, mythology, Ireland, etc.), but thanks for writing about it so well!

[gali]

Sounds good. A pity about the grammatical errors. Thank you for the lovely review.

[billyg]

I just finished reading the Druid’s Curse and being impressed, I went to Amazon to read the author’s biography. I read your review and noticed you had gotten a few things wrong so I came to onlinebookclub to read your full review. To correct the review, the story takes place over two thousand years. This time span is written in the book’s description as well as in the last chapter. Although you did not mention it in your review, personally for me (or perhaps being a guy I didn’t focus on the love triangle), the curse itself was a vehicle for the author to provide new meanings to a few ancient literary and historical works. Actually, it is quite clever if that is indeed what she intended. Viewing the story as such, I do not agree with you on digression of irrelevant historical items. Especially concerning the wars with Caesar. I had to read the writings of Julius Caesar in law school. Most of what we know about the Druid’s comes from his writings and I enjoyed reading about his wars with them from the Druid’s perspective. Even though the story is fiction, it made me wonder if there weren’t a similar truth to the reason Caesar forsook the quest to conquer Britain. I believe that The Druid’s Curse is intended for a well-read audience who is already acquainted with the legendary stories and can appreciate the fresh twist she gave them. I specifically like the spiritual charge she gave the story and am surprised you didn’t mention it. Spiritual progression was a major theme in the book. There were a few typos but I did not notice any of the grammatical claims you made. Surprised I wouldn’t have caught these, I conducted a word search and found them to be used correctly. I do not know if you read the ebook or printed version but I can only surmise that the author may have given the book another edit and republished?

[TheMusicalMuse]

@billyg: I stand corrected on the timeline. Thank you! To answer your question, I read the ebook version, so it's quite possible she edited and republished. I hope that is the case. I actually wrote down every time there was an incorrectly spelled word for the first nine chapters and then gave up after that because it was taking too long.

I agree with your perspective about this book...if it is intended for "a well-read audience who is already acquainted with the legendary stories". As such an audience member, I did appreciate the historical value in her writing, and I found the content quite interesting. However, when I began my review, I looked at this book from the viewpoint of your everyday Joe who might just be browsing through it at a bookshelf. As unfortunate as this fact is, there aren't a great number of people out there who would understand and appreciate the historical background of this book; they would be reading it for the simple storyline of the love triangle. So I approached my review as if I were addressing the general populace, many of whom WOULD get bogged down in the peripheral writing.

You're correct in pointing out that I didn't mention the spiritual progression. You can see that I wrote a long review already (and I may have lost a point or two for my long-windedness), and I had to pick and choose what I thought would be most relevant to the average reader. Thank you for your input, though; you've reminded me not to get hung up on a few ideas and lose sight of the bigger themes.

I'm glad you enjoyed this book, and I DO appreciate your critique on my review. I'm new to the review game, and I love hearing from other people about their perspectives on the books I've read. That's what this website is about, right?

[Ealasaid]

Great review, thank you!

[bookowlie]

Nice, insightful review. Personally, I think historical fiction is difficult to write without the plot getting bogged down with the historical elements. It sounds like the pace dragged a little in this book, but was still an enjoyable read.

[bluemel4]

Great review. It seems like this was interesting and frustrating read. I just selected a book by C. J. McWain to review. I wonder if it will have the same errors.

[TheMusicalMuse]

According to one of the previous comments, the grammatical errors weren't present in the version they read, meaning I got an unrevised version. I'm hoping the book you got is already edited. I know I would've enjoyed the book much more if I hadn't kept running into those issues.

[ananya92]

A very well written, in depth review. The book sounds quite interesting, though I've seen a movie based on the same concept.