The Sacred Pool

Veil of Years #1

by L. Warren Douglas

As dark, evil machines threaten to engulf Citharista with the Black Time, young Pierrette journeys across the ancient landscape in search of the old gods who can transform her into a powerful sorceress in order to stop the evil forces. Reprint.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

495 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Born November 3, 1943, Douglas's earliest memories are of a military air show on V-E Day in 1946 or 1947. He attended Sigsbee School in Grand Rapids, MI, where he distinguished himself as a distance runner and a Cub Scout. His favorite hobby was a collection of Devonian and Silurian fossils. Douglas attended Ottawa Junior High in Grand Rapids for 2 years, then the prestigious Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, MI (often called "the Phillips Academy of the Midwest"). He is reticent about his expulsion from Cranbrook, but it may have had something to do with a black eye sported by the scion of a Major Corporate Family, or with an unseemly incident in a nearby college's womens' dormitory. He graduated in 1962 from the Leelanau School (often called the Cranbrook of the North Woods) a few miles from the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Glen Arbor, MI, winning honors in History, Poetry, English, and Art. At Leelanau he became an inveterate backwoods skier, and his love of woods and wilderness is reflected in his fiction.
from: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/l-...

Reviews

[Moria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abandoned on page 331 out of 388. Just... couldn't... do... it. Sorry, mother. I tried and tried.

[Lori Schiele · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book over eight years ago, but remembered very little of it; however, I found in a file of "ideas for short stories" a plot line that I thought might have come from The Sacred Pool. So, I read the book again, only to discover that the plot line was actually mine--inspired by a single thread mentioned in Sacred Pool but never taken to, what I thought, would/should have been fully explored. It relieved me, because that meant I could follow the plot line in my own way, without copying, or repeating, what someone had already written.
The unfortunate part was that I had to read the book again. It wasn't a bad book, just rather confusing with too many characters, religions (Romans, Visigoths, Catholic, etc, including the "old gods") , places (real and imaginary--or magickal) and I really did not enjoy it very much. I had to like it at some point because it has been sitting on my book shelf since I bought it eight years ago, but whatever drew me in then is now gone.
It doesn't mean it's a book that no one will enjoy. I think many people will. I obviously did at one point. But that point is gone. It is the first book of a trilogy although I have not bothered to look for the other two.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super enjoyed this book, it was a refreshing diversion for me to read a fantasy book. This book is an intelligent, adult, female-themed, fairy tale. The heroine is reconciling the evolution of pagan/earth religions with Christianity during the Middle Ages. I was inspired to look into some of the areas in Provence where the quest takes place and to do some of my own research into this time period. This book was well-written and fascinating to read.

[Lynn Calvin]

baen ebook

[Charity · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a outlook that is realistic in the fact that a god is only as powerful as the belief behind it. It also is a wonderful story with emotions I can identify with.

[Mark Stratton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like it 100 pages in. So, I gave up.