Review by Booklist Review
Andrews has acquired quite a following since writing her first women of power adventure, Medicine Woman, in 1983. Seven books later, she has traveled the world with her teachers Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby. Here Andrews travels in Dreamtime to medieval England. She witnesses a previous life in which she is Catherine, a young student of the teachings of Wyrrd, "the study of power and magic in ancient Europe." Her mentor is Grandmother, by turns a kindly old woman or a young beauty accompanied by a giant falcon. Catherine is initiated into various mysteries and falls in love with a dashing wizard. The narrative has all the elements of a romance, yet is infused with spiritualism. While Andrews' books can be read as fantasies, almost as the Nancy Drew stories of the New Age, she claims that her tales are chronicles of actual experiences, and indeed, her accounts mirror many other tales of shamanistic encounters. Intriguingly good reading. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This glacially paced account of the author's regression to a previous medieval lifetime in which she learns ancient mysteries follows Medicine Woman and other reports of Andrews's past lives. Guided by two Indian shaman women, Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs, the narrator takes up, in ``Dreamtime,'' the life of a young English noblewoman, Catherine, as she is taught by a crone she calls Grandmother about the women of the Wyrrd, who long predate Western culture and worship the ``firstness of women.'' Catherine/Andrews learns mental skills such as healing, movement out of the body and communication with animals. She also meets a young nobleman who refuses her love to retain his position in his current lifetime, leaving the narrator to find her own salvation. Reading like historical romance, this will be snapped up by Andrews's large following. $40,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In her seventh book relating her shamanic training, Andrews dives deeper into the teachings of the Sisterhood of the Shields. Guided by Agnes Whistling Elk, Andrews enters the Sacred Dreamtime to explore her past life as a young girl, Catherine, in medieval England. There she is taught by a wise old woman. Catherine falls in love, and when the love affair does not go well, she loses her soul. She must go on a spiritual journey to retrieve her soul and her strength. As always, Andrews provides a good, strong story that balances the dramatic with the spiritual. Moreover, Andrews relates a great deal of philosophical thought without excessive commentary. The strength of the teaching forces the reader to greater awareness. Recommended for public libraries.-- Gail Wood, Montgomery Coll. Lib., Germantown, Md. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Latest entry in Andrews' (Windhorse Woman, etc.) starry-eyed, mind-melting, seemingly endless neo-Castanedan New-Age Bildungsroman Here, Andrews is yanked into the past via a transtemporal umbilical cord while under the tutelage of Agnes Whistling Elk and other members of the Sisters of the Shield, the woman's shaman-and-sewing circle familiar to readers of Andrews' earlier fantasies (""this is a book of magical teachings, not an anthropological study,"" she counsels any readers blind to the glaringly obvious). By visiting the ""Dreamtime""--which has almost nothing in common with the Australian aboriginal concept of the same name--Andrews inhabits the body of Catherine, a teen-age girl in medieval England. There she learns the ""Way of Wyrrd"" from a Yodo-like ""Godmother."" Anddrews discovers that pain is a mental illusion, intuits the language of the plant kingdom, walks on thin air, enjoys telepathy and astral projection. During a bout of magical sex with hunky spirit-man Charles of Glastonbury (""my knees went weak as I gazed into his eyes""), Andrews feels ""the surge of the universe around us."" Alas, she and Charles will never marry--theirs is a higher destiny--but the Way of Wyrrd remains for all true seekers (why, even Jesus was ""a great magician of Wyrrd""). Fast-paced, sometimes knee-slapping gothic-and-goddess pulp. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
