An interesting tale of a mother and daughter, working out their alienation against a backdrop of a Mayan archaeological dig and the ghosts of the past. I've read it a couple of times and it's a 'keeper'. ( )

En las ruinas de una antigua ciudad maya sorprendentemente abandonada, la arqueóloga Elizabeth Butler se enfrenta a la sombra de una sacerdotisa fallecida siglos atrás. Entrará así en el nebuloso mundo de la magia de los mayas, sus sacrificios de sangre y su particular concepción del tiempo.

This review will be kind of jumbled. Rather like ancient ruins.

I found the story boring, a bit annoying, but ultimately not terrible. I would have been happy with a review of it that gave me that info, and then the few spoilers necessary, and be done with it, but instead I finally finished reading the book. Sorry, author. In addition, this ebook version has not all that many typos, but a lot of wrong line breaks mid-sentence, or no breaks thus cramming two people's dialogue into one paragraph. It wasn't overly confusing but it's distracting. And this is not a very interesting story, to me, so distractions worked against it.

Maybe I learned some things about ancient Mayan culture, maybe not. I don't know enough about it to tell. I did see a one-star review that merely protested child sacrifice: "is that really necessary?" and laughed out loud. I don't know a lot about ancient Maya, but I know that sacrifices were important to their beliefs. So, Content Warning, there are historical facts herein. I'm not a fan of human sacrifice, either, including the Bible's, but protesting like that reviewer is ignorant. It says far more about him than the author or the novel.

Anyway. It was okay. There are moments of heightened interest. It ends as well as can be expected. If you're in the mood for a hot dusty rather slow story with a fantastical element, here you go. ( )

Elizabeth Butler is an archaeologist working a dig at a Mayan site in the Yucatan. In her mid-fifties now, she has a painful personal history of a failed marriage, a failed suicide attempt, and lost custody of and limited contact with her daughter, Diane.

Diane Butler has lost her father, her boyfriend, and her job over the course of a couple of weeks, and for reasons she doesn't herself entirely understand, seeks out her famous and long-absent mother.

Diane has been having disturbing dreams, in which she is falling from a great height into a dark void.

Barbara has always seen shadows of the past, watched the long-dead inhabitants of the sites she studies going about their daily lives. It has given her a reputation for remarkably accurate and valuable hunches, but also a reputation for being very eccentric. Now one of the shadows, a priestess of the Mayan moon goddess from just before the disappearance of Maya civilization, has started speaking to her.

I knew when I began reading that I was taking up a very well-regarded but older novel, not just set but written in the mid-eighties, a time with in some respects a very different sensibility. Especially given its then-contemporary setting, I had some reservations, thinking that it might come off as a period piece. It didn't.

The writing drew me in and built a Yucatan that, whether real or not, felt real as I was reading it. The heat, the powerful sun, and the buried, ancient city all seemed palpable. The core of the novel, the relationship between Elizabeth and Diane, and the slowly revealed agenda of the Mayan priestess, is rich and intricate and beautifully developed.

I really could not put this one down. Highly recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

I read this book as an electronic advance reading copy provided by NetGalley, and I have sent my comments to the publisher via that web site. This book was published originally in 1986 and is set in 1984. Perhaps the new edition is the e-book?

I thought Nebula Award winning books only talked about spaceships and aliens, but this book falls more pleasantly on the supernatural side of speculative/science fiction. It is both a Mayan ghost story and an alternative view of schizophrenia. I liked the strong, unusual female characters and loved the setting of a Mayan Riviera archaeological site. Recommended for public libraries, perhaps for the general fiction collection rather than SF. ( )