darwinia
Phantom Goddess said:darwinia, what did you dislike about the book Forest of Souls exactly? I am thinking of buying it and I want to hear both sides of the reviews
Sorry, I missed this, have been offline mostly for a few days.
I like and respect Rachel's talent. I think she is a great writer and a highly imaginative storyteller--storyteller in the old-fashioned sense, someone that people enjoy and respect and flock to for answers and insight.
I enjoyed it when she was talking about the Haindl Tarot in her two books on that deck, because some of those cards have minimal imagery, and she wove such delight into the study and story.
I also feel she takes that too far and goes on associative riffs that are.......silly. There I've said it. She gets carried away and sounds silly. Her mythological associations with tarot seem silly to me also, and I usually love mythology.
I don't care for her adherence to numbers: The Fool's Journey type of story is stultifying to me, as is the adherence to numerological associations and the assertion that such and such a card it related to another because of their proximity or numerology. I don't like to pin it down like that, I find such constraints mind-bogglingly boring, like following a chart or rigid dogma.
At other times she is spontaneous and says go with this or do your own thing, try this, here's a story, what do you think etc., which I liked.
She is a thoughtful, experienced writer, and by others' accounts a wonderful speaker and tarot workshop leader--but her love of story becomes overly fanciful for my taste in this book. I think she's a magical prose stylist, but I thought the book was silly.
A very interesting person and writer though.