The Blessing Stone

Barbara Wood’s The Blessing Stone is an ambitious novel.  It begins three million years ago when a meteorite hits the earth, wiping out the dinosaur population and creating a blue crystal that purportedly has the power to change lives.  Speed forward to 100,000 years ago and we delve into the world of prehistoric woman, following the tale of Tall One as she discovers the magical blue crystal and leads her people safely away from their ancestral, nomadic home at the base of an imminently erupting volcano.  As millennia and centuries pass, we follow the blue crystal as it traverses this wide world we live in, experiencing for a brief time, the lives of the various people who inherit it, by one means or another:  The Lady Amelia in Rome in the days of early Christianity who through her courage becomes a saint; Mother Winnifred, prioress of St Amelia’s abbey in medieval England, who uses the gift of courage imbibed by the blue crystal, to ward off a Viking attack, and so on. 

The premise of Wood’s novel is intriguing and yet the blue stone is just an inanimate object that one cannot begin to care about.  I enjoy novels that are character driven, and at first I enjoyed the book very much, connecting with the characters in prehistoric times as they struggled for survival and to make sense of this world we live in.  Yet, as the novel moved into more recent historical times, I found myself more and more removed from the subsequent characters and their stories.  The novel read more as a narration of this stone’s journey than a story of real people and their triumphs and failures.  And so I was left wanting more. 

 

The Blessing Stone’s central message of femininity and female power, of women’s role as mother creator usurped by the male Christian god is soon bogged down by mediocre characters and a final message that the stone is just a stone after all and the power to change your future lies within yourself.  Wood’s novel, while starting off strong and interesting, soon wallows with mixed messages and it is unclear to this reader, just what it is she is trying to say.

 

A great beginning, and well worth the read up until book six (of eight) or so, though the threads of the story clearly start to unravel around book five.  Just one reader’s opinion.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L :)