From Publishers Weekly
Roman Gaul can be endlessly fascinating or, as here, it can be textbook dull. In the continuing saga of Pierette the sorceress and scholar, introduced in the well-received prequel, The Sacred Pool (2001), the heroine now takes on the task of saving the Roman Empire. Pierette's studies have taught her two nifty spells that take her across Europe she can light fires with her fingers and she can travel through time by reciting a quick incantation. Her principal objective is to fix a part of history that has somehow gotten off track, but first she has to figure out how and where to go. In her journey she meets Celts, Greeks, early Christian pilgrims, more Gauls and some strange fant?mes. Unfortunately, the story is not only a bit disjointed but also peppered with historical terminology that should be fascinating but instead becomes increasingly uninteresting. Douglas (Simply Human, etc.) tells us a lot about city names and how they change from age to age, besides providing some glimpses into how early Europeans lived, ate and dressed. Most annoying, though, is that Pierette doesn't seem to actually do anything. Yes, she travels. She even performs a couple of spells. But while she figures out what she needs to do to save the world, the reader doesn't feel the emotion or the thought processes that go into her actions. Usually someone else rescues her and tells her what she needs to do next. This thinly plotted book fails to pull the reader into what could be a very exciting epoch, and that's too bad. (July) Forecast: Most fans of the first book in the series will grab this one, too, but the third volume will need to be stronger to keep their loyalty. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
When the young mage Pierette notices that the events in her history books are changing before her eyes, she realizes that powerful magics have surfaced in her world. In order to restore the truth, she must travel in time to a period in which her native Provence lay in the hands of the empire of Rome. Douglas's sequel to The Sacred Pool continues the story of a resourceful young woman whose knowledge of history, magic, and the old religion provides the key to fighting the emergence of the Black Time. The author's meticulous historical research and his grasp of the relationship between early Christianity and ancient paganism should attract fans of historical fantasy. A good choice for most libraries. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The sequel to The Sacred Pool [BKL D 15 00] continues Douglas' saga of a mythic Provence, focusing largely on the young sorceress Pierrette. Learning that the Eater of Gods is threatening to bring on the Dark Time, when in an otherwise grim world all work will be done by the captive souls of murdered children, Pierrette must travel back in time and also across time to a key turning point in history. She finds it in the late second century B.C.E., during the initial Roman conquest of southern Gaul. There she has to defeat a literally demonic Gaulish king, Teutomalas, and his sorcerous ally, the mage Cunotar. Coincidentally, she experiences her own sexual awakening (without, however, losing her virginity, technically) and encounters several well-drawn characters, including the Roman general Calvinus and the historian Polybius. Douglas' use of historical and folkloric material, his expertise in Roman warfare, and the deft characterizations outweigh occasional lapses in narrative technique. For the serious reader of historical fantasy, highly recommended. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
The Veil of Years FROM THE PUBLISHER
The young apprentice mage, Pierette, discovers that the pages in the history books are fading away. Like stars going behind a passing cloud, the events that define the sunny world she loves are winking out one by one, and the shadows of ancient headless Gauls—souls of the dead whose heads once adorned the pillars of the city of Provence—are seen by night...
Is the Black Time coming, when evil will reign supreme? The answer lies in the long ago, when Provence was a Roman camp, and Pierette must brave the otherworld to journey there.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
When the young mage Pierette notices that the events in her history books are changing before her eyes, she realizes that powerful magics have surfaced in her world. In order to restore the truth, she must travel in time to a period in which her native Provence lay in the hands of the empire of Rome. Douglas's sequel to The Sacred Pool continues the story of a resourceful young woman whose knowledge of history, magic, and the old religion provides the key to fighting the emergence of the Black Time. The author's meticulous historical research and his grasp of the relationship between early Christianity and ancient paganism should attract fans of historical fantasy. A good choice for most libraries. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Second part of Douglas's rambling, scholarly fantasy trilogy (The Sacred Pool, 2001). In about the ninth century, young sorceress Pierrette has developed a theory to explain why ancient spells no longer work, and why good modern spells vary in effect from place to place. As always, her primary task—inspired by the ancient Earth-goddess Ma—is to avert the Black Time, a dead, soulless, polluted, machine-dominated future. This time, after an enigmatic warning from the goddess, Pierrette notices that the histories her books record are changing, even vanishing: somehow, time itself is being twisted and bent. In the second century b.c., in Pierrette's reality, the Romans decisively defeated the Druidic Gauls, paving the way for Christianity and forcing the ominous Black Time to retreat. But now, it seems, the Gauls were victorious, Rome's empire never cohered, and a machine-dominated Black Time has given way to an equally repugnant future controlled by demonic magic, where enslaved ghosts have replaced machines. To investigate, Pierrette must learn to travel bodily in time. She finds the Druids are taking heads, thus confining the souls of the dead, and using that captive energy to create a being of godlike power, against whom the Romans will crumble. Somehow, using her magic and her feminine wiles, she needs to prevail upon the Roman commander, Caius Sextius Calvinus, to attack the Gauls' stronghold, while she finds some way to destroy the heads and release the agonized ghosts. Again: authoritative, fascinating, and delightful.
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