Pagan Book Reviews

The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales
C. S. MacCath
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, March 2013
86 pages

Reviewed by Ser

The Ruin of Beltany Ring starts off with a beautiful, heartfelt forward by one of my favorite pagan authors, Deborah Blake. I am pleased to agree with her praise and thoroughly enjoyed the read.

Switching between poems and short stories, the author twists you up in one storyline before whisking you off to the next world, not giving you a chance to collect your scattered emotions. That is, if you read it all at once as I did my first read-through, unable to put it down. The stories are so unexpected, so honest and heartfelt yet unyielding. They could be told by anyone, they’re not exclusively pagan, except the threads of magic that run through each one.

I was most struck by the short story, “Ink of the Dead”. There is so much life in those words, and while the storyline itself isn’t pagan-centric, take those elements out and it’s just not the same.

There were a few formatting issues and misalignments, perhaps only in the .pdf version, but nothing that detracts from the spirit of this book. Highly recommended to read, more than once.

Five pawprints out of five.

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