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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Fey, magical story, 14 Jul 2003
Keeper of the Light tells the story of the healer Rioghan, who lives a hermit like life in Sion amongst the little people – the Sidhe. Rioghan’s heritage is a mix of Sidhe and Man, and she protects the stone circle at Sion and the precious artefacts of the Sidhe. Donaill is the kings champion, a warrior that one day may be king. He is handsome, charming, and accustomed to getting whatever he wants. He rides out one night to get Rioghan to come and act to help a woman whose husband has betrayed her (and whose story is the strong secondary plotline in the book). Donaill becomes intrigued with Rioghan and over the course of a couple of meetings, including the defence of Sion from attack from his own village, Donaill persuades Rioghan that he wants to pay court to her. Rioghan reluctantly agrees – reluctant because she disbelieves that any man would remain satisfied with just one woman, let alone a man of status and influence such as Donaill. And sure enough, soon after that agreement Donaill comes under the influence of a village woman…As someone who normally likes fantasy and magical tales, I didn’t love this book. There is not much story to it, as the threat on Sion is the only action – repeated again and again but that’s it. I did enjoy that Rioghan and Donaill were carefully built characters, products of their backgrounds and experiences and quite different from each other. Rioghan while being a woman of the earth, was quite unable to trust. Donaill, a warrior, seemed to have less of a problem with that than Rioghan, but of course he was much less vulnerable in the almost feudal system that operates in O’Kerry’s creation. I was interested in their story, but there was no complexity to it, no richness, no real challenge that I felt had to be overcome, aside from the magical one. I could not connect with the lifestyle of the villagers. For example their rather feudal lord was referred to as a king. Donaill might one day become king, but there was no explanation of the hierarchy - making it difficult for me to picture the world O’Kerry was trying to create. Clearly a lot of influences in the book, especially Irish and druid, but I’m not sure I found it engaging enough. Ultimately I didn’t became involved in the story – the pace was too slow and there was simply not enough going on either between characters or in terms of plot to keep me interested.
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