Walking the Labyrinth
By Lisa Goldstein
Tor Books, $21.95
ISBN 0312861753
Review by Larry Woods
If you enjoy Carlos Castaneda's magic realism or Roger Zelazny's Amber series, then you will stay up late reading Lisa Goldstein's Walking the Labyrinth. Molly Travers learns from John Stow, a private detective, that her great-aunt Fentrice Allalie (who raised her when Molly was orphaned), her aunt Thorne (who long ago seemed to disappear), and her uncle Callan and uncle Corrig are either magicians or wizards or at a minimum very successful illusionists. Just ask Andrew Dodd, a reporter for the Oakland Tribune who interviewed the Allalie family 60 years ago and had his life changed forever. Or ask Molly's other relatives Lord Harrison Sanderson, Master of the Order of the Labyrinth, or Lady Dorothy Westingate, both believers in the seances and spiritualism of the late 1800s in England.
The mystery here is the disappearance of Lady Westingate in England almost 100 years ago, the similar disappearance of Thorne in this country, and whether Molly will learn anything through her examination of the lives of this strange family with awesome powers of mind control and illusion. This is a fabulous novel about an orphaned girl who searches Victorian England and modern-day California for clues to her own identity.
Larry D. Woods, an attorney, is an avid reader of science fiction.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
www@bookpage.com
Support your local independent bookseller