Review: Compelling, heartbreaking, and uplifting.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 7, 2013
The Ninth TaghairmThis is an incredible tale of love and betrayal. It's our nature (all of us) to trust. When someone tells you anything you don't assume they are lying, you never assume they are manipulating you. But that is exactly what narcissistic psychopaths do, they lie, and they manipulate, and they are always conceited enough to think 'you won't catch them' at it. Damn this presses my 'I want to put a bullet in your head and end you' button.From the beginning you'd never guess where this story is going. Instead you are pulled along for the ride with Gadin while he falls into the perfect love with Talula. But Talula is a goddess, a fallen one, and she's going to hurt him more times than he deserves.Talula's mother reminds me so very much of Sin's daughter Inanna. If you're not familiar with her tale from the Sumerian Clay Tablets, this bitchy goddess betrays her husband, her family, everything and everyone in a bid to reign supreme - even in the underworld. She goes to the underworld with trickery up her sleeve and does her utmost to usurp her sister's throne. And like Inanna - the vanity, the adoration expected, the ability to betray and decimate souls is a purely 'bitch mother' syndrome thing to do. These women are so far gone upstairs that all they are are soul sucking sex-sticks walking around ready to suck the next soul out of a nice person. These women are empty and cruel and have no remorse. Like Inanna there is a trade to be made to free someone from the underworld in this tale. Inanna offered her husband. Talula's mother Frige gave her daughter. The only way to free the living from the underworld is to trade a body for a body... you will have to read the ninth taghairm for yourself to find out how they get out of this one!In this tale gaelic is employed well, the standing stones on the Scottish Isle of Orkney is a place of sacrifice, it is a unique conglomeration of 'mythologies' which mingle with fiction. Maeshowe (burial tombs) become doorways to darkness, and it's a fast moving dramatic and dark read where you will find yourself cheering for Gadin and Talula the whole way through. This author has a fantastic imagination which she communicates effectively, and I loved her making a blue haired, pierced, bubblegum blowing goddess. (Now that's MY kind of goddess).Talula once did a very bad thing (a very bad thing). The repercussions of her actions have become her legacy, her destiny, and her karma all rolled into one. I found this PNR fantasy gripping, compelling, and satisfying. Totally 5 stars from me (more if I could for the use of mythology)