Witchlight

September 2, 1996
Fans of Bradley's popular Darkover series and The Mists of Avalon will recognize familiar plot elements in this contemporary fantasy quest, a successor to Ghostlight (1995). Heroine Winter Musgrave, 36, awakens terrified one morning in a mysterious old rural New York farmhouse, unable to recall more than flashes of her former life as a Manhattan stockbroker. Seeking relief from malevolent paranormal phenomena that she seems to be causing, Winter approaches Truth Jourdemayne, a psychic researcher who appeared in Ghostlight, for help. With Truth's guidance, Winter gradually regains her memory and faces horrors within and without as she crisscrosses the country to track down the members of her college amateur magical circle. By reforging the group's spiritual bonds, Winter hopes to exorcise her demons and to save her lover. Bradley poses insights into modern deviltry--the psychological consequences of abortion, child and spouse abuse; dysfunctional families; stress-filled urban life--by implicitly contrasting them with the traditional, spirituality balanced Celtic Otherworld, said to coexist with concrete reality. Lacking the absorbing history and environment of Arthurian legend or of the alien planet Darkover, however, Winter's struggle to come of age as a psychic woman warrior lacks vigor, though Bradley still can spin a wicked web of tangled relationships and motivations.

May 1, 1996
Bradley, a household name among sf fans, tells the story of a woman who struggles to recover her past--and discovers that she was once a witch.

August 1, 1996
In yet another masterful story, Bradley gives us Winter Musgrave, a young woman who cannot remember her past and seeks to reconstruct her blank life with the aid of old friends. This excellent novel of self-discovery belongs in most sf collections of contemporary magic. [Previewd in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/96.]

September 1, 1996
Bradley gives us another modern gothic yarn, similar to her "Ghostlight" and involving some of the same characters without, however, actually being a sequel. Winter Musgrave is being haunted by vague, incomplete memories of a past in which she suspects something horrible happened. From the earlier book, Truth Jourdemayne comes to Winter's rescue, establishing that Winter must reconstruct a long-gone magical circle of college friends to fully restore her memories. This well-told tale full of both the virtues and the faults of the gothic genre, modernized or not, demands high tolerance for the New Age, since both its mythic basis and its setting involve New Age elements. Bradley's dedicated fans and those who liked "Ghostlight" will meet that demand and make their own--to read "Witchlight." ((Reviewed Sept. 1, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)