cover image Celtic Heart

Celtic Heart

Kathryn Marie Cocquyt, Cocquyt. Llewellyn Publications, $14.95 (600pp) ISBN 978-1-56718-156-2

The dramatic conceit of this lengthy multi-generational Celtic love story is sadly undermined by Cocquyt's heavy-handed telling of it. Patterned at least in part after Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, the epic delves into the lives and cultural dynamics of the Brigantes tribe during the Roman invasion of Britain. The author clearly devoted more attention to historical and religious (Druidic) details than to the narrative-the romance between the warriors Aonghus and Kordelina lacks tension, cohesion or consistency. In a work of this length, Cocquyt's staccato prose quickly metamorphoses from rhythmic to droning, and her language sometimes verges on the macabre (``then he fled for the company of his lambent-haired confidant''). Cocuyt's pastiche of Druidic dialogue is equally bizarre, lacking any truck with reality (""`Forgive me sweet lovers,' she whispered, looking adoringly at the two. `What peace you must have found in this place together.'"") Also troubling is a contradiction of the celebration of female autonomy and the sexual violence in the various rape scenes interspersed throughout the text. Over all, the story lacks the subtlety, nuance and draw to keep a reader slogging through the epic pages. (Oct.)