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Submitted by Samantha 
(Jul 08, 2008)

This book was, by and large, a terrible read. Forgiving the obvious lack of writing talent on the part of Harding, the story was preachy and the entire concept of "going back in time and fixing the way people behave with cunning use of martial arts and feminism" demonstrated only that Harding has either never heard of cultural relativity, or is arrogant enough to believe herself the moral endpoint of civilisation.

I really wish this book had turned out better, time travel to ancient Celtic times is a very entertaining notion, and it just didn't get the treatment it deserved. How could it, with a protagonist who always gets her own way and never learns anything?

I have mixed feelings about this series. For one thing, there's no denying that it's easy to read and hooks your attention from the start. The Ancient Future was a great book, and the level of historical research the author conducted in order to write it is very impressive.

On the other hand, from the second book onwards, the characters keep getting unbelievably more powerful and perfect, which is extremely irritating. Tory's character was already close to humanly perfect in the first novel, but at least she was very likeable. In the rest of the series, however (*warning: mild spoilers*), she gains more and more powerful magical abilities, and the series degenerates into a trashy soap opera between characters who are practically gods and yet cannot do simple things like control their sex drives. There's also the irritating point that all the ordinary humans in the books, if they are not secretly magical in one way or another, are treated with the sort of careless disregard reserved for animals - that they're just not important enough to really play a main role. This also wasn't evident in the first book, but by the third it was really obvious.

The first book aside, I couldn't put aside the idea that this whole series was blantant wish-fulfilment by Ms Harding. Indeed, by the time the second trilogy came around, everyone had already become perfect that there was nothing left to include in the plot except dull filler spanning several hundred pages. I was so disappointed because I loved the first book so much, but it turned from one of my favourite series to one of my least favourite series halfway through. I noticed that many people have cited this series as being their favourite, but I would suspect they hadn't yet read it all the way through. Admittedly it was very good to start with, but it deteriorated rapidly.

THE ANCIENT FUTURE

When Traci Harding used the phrase, 'the dead carcass', I knew I was up for a challenge. I don't think I've ever circled anything in red pen in a library book before. As opposed to, for instance, 'the live carcass'?? Geez.

A friend recommended The Ancient Future to me as a deep read with ties to science fiction, quantum physics and metaphysics. Maybe she was on drugs when she read it.

This book reads like Mary-Sue fanfiction. Shallow writing, dreadful dialogue with out of place 'thees' and 'thous', cardboard-cutout characters (all the good characters are incredibly beautiful; the evil ones ugly and wrinkled). The whole premise of the book is ridiculous. Essentially, it's a trashy romance. And yet, it has this incredible fan following! WHY???

The main character, Tory, is a young Australian black belt who luckily speaks ancient Welsh. She is magically zapped into Celtic Britain and falls in love with The Prince and saves the world.

Sounds just like my first and only Legolas Mary-Sue. Mary-Sue is pretty and has l337 skills; she falls into Middle-Earth; falls in love with The Elf Prince and saves the world.

Only, my writing as a thirteen-year-old was marginally better because I 'showed rather than told'. Most of the time.

This was an absolutely terrible book, full of grammatical errors and clumsy writing. Every single character was shallow and boring, and Tory is an absolute "Mary Sue" - a character that is ridiculously perfect in every way. There was no space for her to develop as a person throughout the book because she was already so amazingly perfect at the beginning and the author didn't bother to introduce us to her properly. Combine that with the ridiculous use of slang in the supposed ancient language Tory is amazingly just "able" to speak because her father is a professor of ancient languages leaves one sickeningly awful book.

This is literally one of the worst books I have ever read in my life, and I almost cried for humanity knowing that it was a good seller. There are so many things wrong with it that I don't know what else to add. I suppose i'll just say that this book is absolutely not reccommended to anyone who doesn't want to have their brain cells melted.

The Ancient Future and Celestial Triad trilogy's are above all the most awakening novels I have ever read. I started reading them in highschool and finished about a year and a half ago.
They inspired me to question my spirituality and lead me down a beautiful path which I am still following.

It is a story of an aussie girl named Tory, her friends, family and loved ones who encounter each other again and again through many lives on Earth and other planets, dimensions and times. Each time learning a lesson, accomplishing idealistic miracles and progressing through the stages of life.

The tale draws on themes from buddhism, taekwondo, paganism, science, space and extra-terrestrials.

Traci Harding is an amazing author and individual, all her books are easy to read and evoke great emotion from the reader. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in life and the world we live in.