Naomi de Bruyn penned this review.
Katherine Sweeney Cassidy is a new student at the University of the Archangels and St. John the Divine, simply called ‘the Divine’ by those familiar with it. The student body is composed of various religions, and the campus is made up of buildings dedicated to those religions built with money from the affluent parents of students, as well as contributing graduate students. Androgynous stone angels guard the older buildings, including Sweeney’s dormitory. A pair of these silent guardians sit ever-watchful just beyond her window, their corner ledge a safe place to perch, even for humans.
Sweeney is befriended by two very flamboyant people at her first class. The first is Oliver, a wonderfully eccentric but drugged-out Wildean aesthete, a man who has seemingly never heard of socks, and has a watch inked onto his shirt cuff, its hands forever pointing at four o’clock, ‘always time for tea.’ Oliver is a mix of quotes and passion, and just slightly off-kilter from the ‘norm.’
Sweeney’s second new friend is the gorgeous Angelica, a young woman so beautiful she turns the heads of all of her fellow students, be they male or female. But she is one of those people whom everyone loves regardless of how she may treat them, or others. All of her sins are forgiven.
There are other friends, of course, but they all seem to revolve around these three. For them this is a time to explore the boundaries of life, test the limits of friendships, experiment with drugs, alcohol, and sex. A time to discover who they are and what life is all about, and where they want it to take them. A time of golden immortal youth. Until Sweeney crashes the wrong party, that is.
Angelica and Oliver are part of a longtime legacy of the Divine, the Benandanti. This is a covert patriarchal group which has secretly manipulated every facet of importance around the world since long before the fall of the Roman Empire. World governments, institutions, churches, all are guided by the Benandanti. And their main base of operations is the Divine, a fact known by a number of the students, whose families have been involved since time began. They are known to others as the ‘molyneux scholars’ the up-and-coming members of the Benandanti. Oliver and Angelica are invited to a reception for the ‘molyneux scholars’ and bring Sweeney along for a lark.
What begins that night with the simple opening of the wrong door will forever change the lives of these friends. Sweeney and Angelica are witnesses to magic, and the condemning to death of a woman who is a one-time member of the Benandanti. Her crime? Attempting to bring about the resurrection of Goddess worship. The pair of frightened young women cannot avoid being caught by Balthazar Warnick, head of the order.
The Benandanti turn out to be a virtual army of shamans and priests, working to keep patriarchy prevalent, for if it fails, there is a much older and darker blood cult built upon the worship of the Moon Goddess, the destroyer aspect of the mother, that is waiting for its chance to regain control of the world. And with this control will come the decimation of the male population, turning our world into an amazon society filled with only chaos and a lifestyle better suited to animals.
The three friends play an important part in this ‘battle of the sexes,’ but their roles are not what the Benandanti expect. This is an explosive and intriguing tale of love, ancient ritual and religion, and self-sacrifice, a tale of the ultimate growth one can aspire to. I felt it dragged a bit at the beginning. The plot seemed unnecessarily circuitous. However, about halfway through it actually had me wondering what would happen next.
Elizabeth Hand has won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards. She is the author of Winterlong, Black Light, Glimmering, Aestival Tide, Icarus Descending, and numerous short stories and plays. She lives in Maine with her husband, novelist Richard Grant, and their two children.
(Harper Prism, 1995)
