I read a dozen pages of ‘Magus of Stonewylde’ and was trapped, for the duration of the book. In fact, I got so emotionally involved with the two main characters that I lay awake at night worrying about them, and had to exert all my strength of character not to flick to the last chapter to reassure myself that they won through. And then I was left on the biggest cliff-hanger at the end of a first novel in a sequence since "The Fellowship of the Ring". Of course I can't wait, now, to get my hands on book two, and I couldn't imagine that any sane person would feel otherwise.
Kit Berry is an amazing natural storyteller, as much a magician in her effect as any of her characters. There is nobody who has taken the spirit of modern British Paganism, and infused it into a thrilling tale, as convincingly and alluringly as she. In a deeper sense, however, this achievement is an extra one, because her people, her places and her plots are all so vivid that they would in themselves establish her as a major novelist of what can be termed 'fantastic realism'.
April 4th 2007
 I have now finished the second book, and Kit has pulled off what I
thought to be the impossible task of causing me to enjoy it even more than
the first. Because she warned me, I am not as frantic as I would have been
to be abandoned, apparently dying, on a hill-top until autumn. Looking back
over the book, I can see why I found it even more enjoyable. The
characters are now all fully established and so is the sense of place, and
so she can spend more time upon psychological detail and the nature of self-sufficient farming and craft techniques, and belief-systems. I think that she has the balance exactly correct between background description and action.
I shall place my order for Book Three with even more eagerness, and trepidation, than for the last Harry Potter.
April 27th 2007
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