The Burning Time by Robin Morgan

[Divia]

I did enjoy this book about the Inquisition coming to Ireland. It is based on the true story of Dame Alyce Kyteler’s fight against the Inquisition. It was the first case of witchcraft in Ireland.

Ms. Morgan does a wonderful job of writing this story. She is an award winning poet and her writing style is very good--most of the time. Sometimes I did find her writing a bit clunky and awkward, but those moments were few.


The story was very interesting. Dame must go up against the Catholic Church in court. The Chruch says they want to weed out pagans and heretics , but Dame knows they are trying to take Ireland. I love reading about the Inquisition and find there are not enough books on the topic so this caught my eye. Please do not confuse this with The Burning Times by Jeanne Kalogridis.

My one complaint about the book is that it read like a 200X book on modern witchcraft/Wicca. All of the ceremonies happen as if they take place in modern time. Maybe I do not know the history of Wicca well enough, but I don’t think people would do this hundreds of years ago. It just seems too modern. Also Alyce is rather liberal. For example, Alyce teaches her peasants to read and write. I am unsure if this is true or not, but that was a little hard to wrap my head around. It just didn’t seem to fit with the time.


Overall, the book was good, but a little too modern for my taste. If it had been handled a little differently and we saw the main character behaving like a person o fher time then I might have liked it better. Still, it was an interesting read and worth the money.