REVIEW
Freda Warrington - Dark Cathedral
Creed (Signet) Pbk (0 45 118402 5) £5.99
Freda Warrington is well-known for her rich, seductive vampire fantasies. With Dark Cathedral she turns to the realms of magic, witchcraft and religious obsession. The magic is that of the old pagan religion, of the women healers practising their art using natural remedies and gifts of healing provided by the all-powerful Earth Mother. The foundation of this religion was the worship of Life and Nature, a revelling in and reverence for the cycles of birth, re-generation and death. But these women and their practices became outlawed as the new male-dominated church gained power. Inspired by fear, hatred and lack of understanding, the men of the church persecuted anyone suspected of practising this witch-craft.
The Dark Cathedral’s tale spans the centuries, the old religion and Christian zealots confront each other time and again. A modern version of the age-old conflict is replayed thorough the members of two families. In one the mother is a religious bigot and obsessive, physically and mentally punishing son and daughter in the name of Christianity, in the other the mother is accused of practising witchcraft with a son born out of wedlock - a child of Satan. With a dreadful sense of inevitability, the young people meet and fall in love and are parted. Their love is bound for disaster, given the parents. But the child of their passion has powers of "seeing" and appears to be reliving the past conflicts, in a hope to alter the consequences for a group of pagan women.
Freda Warrington writes beautifully and evocatively of the old religion and of the love between the two young people. A sense of foreboding permeates the whole book. Events conspire and lead inexorably on to a final confrontation. The Dark Cathedral is engrossing and exciting. I thoroughly enjoyed it. (EAL)