Sandy M’s review of Veil of Time by Claire R. McDougall
Women’s Fiction – Paranormal/Time Travel published by Gallery Books 11 Mar 14
I’ve been a time travel fan for a number of years now. That’s what first drew me to this book, then it was the blurb. Therefore, I had high hopes. What I found when I finished the book, though I’m trying to read outside my romance box, that what I needed for everything to come together is that romantic aspect more pronounced than it is. So, in the end, this one just isn’t for me. However…
Don’t get me wrong – this is a well-written, full-of-history story. If you’re okay with just a smidgen of romance-like elements woven into it, you’ll probably fare better I have.
Maggie’s life has take huge blows – the loss of her eight-year-old daughter and then her marriage. She’s retreated to Dunadd, the ancient royal seat of Scotland. One more blow is in the immediate future, the brain surgery that will once and for all cure her epileptic seizures. Writing her thesis and visiting with her only neighbor, Jim, takes up her days. Until she experiences the impossible when suffering a seizure.
At first Maggie believes all she’s seeing is a dream. What else could it be? But waking up in a different Scotland, meeting people dressed from another era – and then there’s Fergus – she begins to believe she’s actually traveling through time . She’s drawn to him immediately, and though communication is cumbersome, he seems to be attracted to her too. Fergus is the king’s brother, his mom the Queen Mother. He’s also a widower with an eight-year-old daughter, Illa. In between interactions with Fergus, Maggie little by little learns about life in the eighth century.
When she wakes up in her own home, she talks about her dreams with Jim, ruminates about her experiences in her favorite spot above Dunadd, and ultimately decides to cease taking her medication so she can return to Fergus. It takes a number of visits before there’s more than a touch or a look between them. That’s the first element that keeps me from really enjoying this story. As much as Maggie always wants to go back to Fergus, and even when they do cross the line over to a true couple, there’s not that much steam, sizzle, heat, whatever word you’d like to apply to that something that happens between characters so you know there’s true feeling of some kind there. You do feel Fergus’ loss of his wife, you know how he felt about her. But once he gets over his suspicions about Maggie, I never get the same feeling from him about this new woman in his life.
With her surgery fast approaching, Maggie’s dilemma is not only deciding where she belongs but also how much she should tell Fergus about his time and what will happen. Then her seizures become less and less, keeping her at home and away from her new love. The next one that hits is at the most inopportune time, and this is where the next big issue happens for me – the ending. Totally does not work for me at all. I don’t like Maggie’s decision, I don’t like being left hanging without answers about who’s been left behind. To me, this is a paranormal book, anything and everything could have been done, but for some reason the author goes a totally different route. Okay, I know that’s the romance reader in me talking, but despite the fact this book is heavy with history – of which the author does a terrific job – I think more could have been done for a better ending.
Other little tidbits that bother me are all of the “in-between” scenes when Maggie is home before her next traveling episode. So many of them aren’t needed and have no meaning to what’s going on. Of course, there are others that do have meaning, and those make the story flow along nicely, but the aforementioned unneeded ones make it drag much too slowly. I definitely enjoyed the historical aspects of the book, something I’ve neither heard of or read before. The author keeps those aspects of the book very real.
But there’s just enough that goes in the opposite direction for me to leave me with a bit too much disappointment. I know, however, there’s plenty of you out there who will love this story.
Grade: C-
Summary:
In the wake of her divorce, Maggie Livingstone leaves her native Glasgow to rent a holiday cottage at the foot of Dunadd, an ancient Pictish hill fort in the Scottish highlands, where the kings of Scotland were once crowned. There she is hoping to find time to herself to finish a post-graduate thesis on the witch burnings she started before her marriage.
But there is too much in Maggie’s past to allow for much peace and quiet: There’s her epilepsy for which a scheduled surgery might be her only chance of “normality;” there’s the recent death of her eleven year-old daughter, Ellie; there’s her teenage son, who left for boarding school when tensions at home became intolerable.
But most of all, there are those vivid dreams Maggie has in the deep sleep after seizures which make her draw only a fuzzy line between waking and sleeping. Dunadd, with its own vibrant history, starts to cross that line, and soon Maggie isn’t sure if she is only dreaming about her forays back to 735AD.
Fergus, the king of Dunadd’s recently widowed brother, certainly seems real enough to be more than a passing interest to Maggie. Sula the druidess paints quite a different picture of the pagan religion than Maggie had understood from her research. And then there is Fergus’s young daughter, who is so like her own daughter, Maggie can’t decide which world she belongs in.
Back in her own time, Maggie discovers in an ancient census that 735 AD was the year of a devastating earthquake at Dunadd. With the date of her surgery fast approaching, Maggie knows she has to get back to warn Fergus to take his daughter and leave the fort, that the era of his family’s rule at Dunadd is about to come to an abrupt end.
No excerpt available.
