The Diviner's Tale - Bradford Morrow

Share your experience of fictional dowsing-related books and blogs (e.g. websites, self-published and e-books).

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Grahame
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The Diviner's Tale - Bradford Morrow

Post by Grahame »

Thought I would kick start the fiction section by sharing my review of this book from Amazon...

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Amazon summary wrote:Cassandra Brooks is a single mother-of-two, a schoolteacher and a water diviner. Deep in the woods as she dowses the land for a property developer, she is lost in her thoughts, until something catches her eye and her daydream shatters.
Swinging from a tree is the body of a young girl, hanged. But when she returns with the authorities, the body has vanished. Already regarded as the local eccentric, her story is disbelieved until a girl turns up in the woods, alive, mute and identical to the girl in Cassandra's vision.
In the days that follow, Cassandra's visions become darker and more frequent as they begin to take on tangible form. Forced to confront a past she has tried to forget, Cassandra finds herself locked in a game of cat-and-mouse with a real life killer who has haunted her for longer than she can remember.
This spellbinding concoction of suspense, romance and the supernatural will pull
you helplessly down into Cassandra's luminous world.
This was a lot better than I thought it would be from other reviews. The main character is well-rounded and easy to identify with, and the location descriptions are very evocative of rural New England. The plot device of using the divining almost as an excuse for not revealing the crucial plot twists until later worked pretty well, although I was slightly irritated by it at times. However I thought the descriptions of dowsing were very accurate and it was obvious that the author had done his research on the subject (it transpires that he is actually a dowser himself).
There was a good range of characters in the story, and the relationships between them come across well and are very believable, particularly those of the immediate family.
I found there were a few interesting archaic or peculiarly North American words used that had me making good use of my Kindle's dictionary feature; I also found myself clipping some good one-liner aphorisms for future reference!
I'll be looking at other books by this author in future.
I gave it 4 stars on Amazon. Now I did see this on one of the shelves at Conference, so chances are they will have it in the BSD shop.
Grahame
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: The Diviner's Tale - Bradford Morrow

Post by Thevic »

Anything by Phil Rickman does it for me. 'Crybbe' and its near enough 'sequel' (but they stand alone as good reads) The Chalice both have a dowsing slant.
Cracking writer.
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Re: The Diviner's Tale - Bradford Morrow

Post by Grahame »

Preaching to the converted there, Thevic - we often mention Phil's books, and he frequently cites the BSD in his acknowledgements. I'm almost finished Curfew on my second read of it on the Kindle.
Why don't you start a new topic and review one of Phil's books?
Grahame
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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Re: The Diviner's Tale - Bradford Morrow

Post by Ian Pegler »

An interview with Bradford Morrow..he's an ASD member apparently...

CLICK HERE for the interview page.

Ian
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