Book info

• Title The Quiet Earth
• Author Elizabeth Harris
• Year 1995
• Genre Fantasy

Winter 1994, and in the Wye Valley a story hidden for almost eight centuries has just been unearthed. For Nina, an ecologist working alongside local archaeologists, the discovery of a baby’s grave dating from the thirteenth century is of far more interest than just academic. Nina is mourning the loss of her own baby – a fact that seems not to have gone un-noticed by the spirits disturbed by the dig. And she is not alone in feeling an unusual affinity with the dig site: her boss Mark also senses strange presences there. Nina is drawn to Mark, but she is unsure of their relationship, and unable to communicate her feelings. Mark, meanwhile, is not a man given to clear expressions of affection and he too is mourning – mourning the failure of his engagement. As Mark and Nina continue to work on the Wye Valley site, their developing relationship has uncanny echoes of the past. The baby buried in the Wye Valley is the child of Gawyn, a headstrong Crusader knight who once travelled from France to Wales with a sacred secret; a secret that has lain dormant for hundreds of years. Until now... The baby’s mother, his wife Roese, followed a hugely challenging and at times death-defying path to find her home in the quiet Wye Valley. As Nina and Mark delve ever deeper into the past, they find out more of Gawyn's story, his travels across Europe and – perhaps most important of all – his encounter with a group of religious believers who held to their beliefs despite being mercilessly persecuted by the Crusaders. With their own story developing and sometimes mirroring that of Roese and Gawyn, will Nina and Mark find a spiritual home? Only time will tell...

Thoughts

I don’t know if this is the kind of book I would usually read, but the more I read the more I started to get into it. It felt like a bit of a slow start, but gradually it gathered steam, particularly as the historical parts started to take shape. Following two time streams with a modern day archeological dig and flashing back to those around in the time being slowly uncovered.

I’ll be honest that I was more interested in the love triangle story than the historical elements, although reading about the castle fortifying itself against impending attack was kinda interesting. I don’t know how fussed I was about the ending, but it came to a satisfying conclusion, so no complaints here.

Rating: 2 / 5