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An archaeologist with a strange power risks death to unlock the secret of the Mayans. When night falls over the Yucatan, the archaeologists lay down their tools. But while her colleagues relax, Elizabeth Butler searches for shadows. A famous scientist with a reputation for eccentricity, she carries a strange secret. Where others see nothing but dirt and bones and fragments of pottery, Elizabeth sees shades of the men and women who walked this ground thousands of years before. She can speak to the past - and the past is beginning to speak back. As Elizabeth communes with ghosts, the daughter she abandoned flies to Mexico hoping for a reunion. She finds a mother embroiled in the supernatural, on a quest for the true reason for the Mayans' disappearance. To dig up the truth, the archaeologist who talks to the dead must learn a far more difficult skill: speaking to her daughter.… (more)
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Anyway, this is a marvelous book, full of fascinating research. It involves a woman
This was well worth a Nebula Award.
What this book really had going for it was a really interesting
I really found it hard to connect with the characters in this book. At first I hated Elizabeth and felt that she was cold and heartless. Once I learned why she is so distant from her daughter Diane I began to feel a bit sorry for her. While I did feel sorry for her nothing about her really made me like her. Quite frankly she was crazy and I just couldn't believe that no one but Robert could have seen that and tried to get her some help. The character that I liked the most in this book was Barbara. She seemed to bring some normality to this book.
This book kept building to an event in which you know some characters in this book are going to break. It really picked up in the second half and I while I initially enjoyed the conflict at the end I feel like it dragged on a bit longer than it should have. I was satisfied with the ending of this book and how the relationship between Elizabeth and Diane is shown in the end.
Overall I enjoyed this book for the archaeological aspects, and the discussion on Mayan culture. I felt like the characters could have been developed more and that the conflict at the end could have been shortened a bit.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the galley.
A vividly descriptive narrative with mulit-laeveled mysteries winds throughout while characters search for meaning and for who they are individually and together.
Characters are diverse, authentic, flawed, and intriguing.
Overall, an intriguing read.
I had a nice email from a lady in the digital marketing department for Open Road Media offering an invitation to review the title via Netgalley. The novel sounded interesting, and I usually like things with Mayan history. I find the Maya rather fascinating. And the
However, I just did not like this book much at all, and after 40% I'm just not interested in reading any more. I tried skimming through, but really just didn't find much to keep me reading.
So I'm DNFing. I didn't like the characters much, the main character, an older lady archaeologist came across as obnoxious and some what full of herself. I liked her adult daughter Diane a little better. Elizabeth sees ghosts on her digs, which was mildly interesting. The dig site was a little more interesting and the people working there. But a lot of the Mayan information filtered through the novel feels more like I'm reading a text book or report rather than a novel. The plot was very very slow and not much seems to be happening other than people working at an archaeological site. Even with the appearance of Mayan ghosts/spirits I'm just frankly not that interested.
Thank you to Netgalley and Open Road Media for your invitation, but this book was not my taste at all.
Diane Butler has lost her father, her
Diane has been having disturbing dreams, in which she is falling from a great height into a dark void.
Barbara has always seen shadows of the past, watched the long-dead inhabitants of the sites she studies going about their daily lives. It has given her a reputation for remarkably accurate and valuable hunches, but also a reputation for being very eccentric. Now one of the shadows, a priestess of the Mayan moon goddess from just before the disappearance of Maya civilization, has started speaking to her.
I knew when I began reading that I was taking up a very well-regarded but older novel, not just set but written in the mid-eighties, a time with in some respects a very different sensibility. Especially given its then-contemporary setting, I had some reservations, thinking that it might come off as a period piece. It didn't.
The writing drew me in and built a Yucatan that, whether real or not, felt real as I was reading it. The heat, the powerful sun, and the buried, ancient city all seemed palpable. The core of the novel, the relationship between Elizabeth and Diane, and the slowly revealed agenda of the Mayan priestess, is rich and intricate and beautifully developed.
I really could not put this one down. Highly recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.