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Reviews of Black Widow

Reviewed by P.L. Crompton, author of The Last Druid


In historical novels, attention to detail is important. When the author adds myth—a form of history unproven—reading pleasure increases tenfold. Black Widow meets all expectations. Excellent writing combined with first-class research made reading a joy. The images of daily life are vivid, and glimpses of a past known only from myths are strong.

Although Roman and Greek historians wrote extensively about Boudicca, Sheila Deeth takes us behind the scenes. Through Nimuẽ, the warrior queen's sister, a sorceress, we see the devastation the conquering Roman army wrought—not just to the Celtic way of life but to their beliefs and to their gods.

That is the background, but this is Nimuẽ's story. Ignored by most historians and overshadowed by her illustrious sister, she comes alive.

Nimuẽ has a lover with greater powers than her own, and she begins to look upon him as a god. But gods betray. When he pays attention to new crucified god, the betrayal rankles and it places distance between them. He changes, but so does she as she explores darker abilities that change gentle Nimuẽ into a woman feared.

Does the betrayal cause the change or is it the destruction of gods no longer revered? With many twists and turns, and names we recognize, Ms. Deeth takes us on a intriguing 500-year journey to find the truth and Nimuẽ's redemption.

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The importance of commas

I saw a blogpost entitled "Can a Comma Be Antisemitic?" So of course, I had to read it. You can find the original post at  https://weekly.israelbiblecenter.com/can-a-comma-be-antisemitic/ . And it's fascinating. The question is: What's the difference between "The Jews, who persecuted the Lord, drove us out" and "The Jews who persecuted the Lord drove us out." Or equivalently, what's the difference between "We have to throw out apples, which are wormy" and "We have to throw out apples which are wormy"? The article explains how the comma makes all the difference between a restrictive and a nonrestrictive clause. In the first (apple) case, all apples are wormy and must be thrown out. In the second, we restrict ourselves to discarding wormy apples - a much more sensible idea. (And in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15, those commas really might be misplaced.) In the Bible, commas matter! In writing,  commas matter!

The joys of Word or the joy of words?

When Word red-underlines things like we'll, they'd, hadn't etc., you might be excused for thinking the program's gone crazy. And you might be right. The problem, if you happen to be running spellcheck (or even trying to read without distraction), is to figure out which particular kind of crazy. After all, those red underlines do kind of draw the eye, distracting from the joy of the author's words. So what's an editor to do? As usual, the first answer is to try Google. Then try asking the same question 300 different ways. And finally, fix it. Which means I've now learned how to tell Word that certain words are not English (and that others are), and how to make Word make all the wrongly flagged Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish words revert to English (US) - or even English (UK) or English (Australian) if desired. So here's how it's done: Open your document. Go to one of those wrongly flagged words, and rig