[.ca] The Crystal Skull (ISBN 0553817663)

Well done:
I was surprised that Manda Scott decided to take on this subject matter. It was very brave I think to do so, considering the difficulties of pulling it off well, and the likely derision she would incur. I learned through this book that the crystal skulls are a genuine "archealogical mystery"--of course, by doing internet searches. Just their construction is a baffling mystery it seems, beyond any other more mystical claims. I found the same artistic mastery here as in her mysteries, and as in her breathtaking Boudica series (the latter being for me something new, something truly amazing, a venture into a genre of (real) magic, firmly meeting, making love with the art of fiction, speaking out of the creative, resonant truths of the ancestral human heart). That series is meditative or magical craft merging with writing art--which (kind of effort) is not something new, yet which, when it rears its head more obviously, tends to be bizarely and even grotesquely denigrated in our day (sadly echoing bygone days, where now the knife is sharpened on the blind reactionary edge of "scientific materialism"). She exposes her throat here, making me want to step in and defend, and to salute her bravery, while wanting her to be careful to maintain a strong position. I find here a fusion of her mystery writing style--it seems--with that style so beautifully displayed in the Boudica series. Probably I am not the only one whose heart finds such complex and yet simple beauty in the Boudica novels--a certain kind of emotional and magical truth. I find here a similar call for rising to a greater, genuine way, in a format more difficult to convey that call, and look forward to anything she ventures in the future. An excellent book.