The Book of Secrets [Enhanced]

1	Prologue 4:25
2	The Mummers' Dance 6:10
3	Skellig 6:10
4	Marco Polo 5:19
5	The Highwayman 10:20
6	La Serenissima 5:10
7	Night Ride Across the Caucasus 8:32
8	Dante's Prayer 9:43

Barnes & Noble

Critics love to bash Loreena. The Celtic mystery priestess throws theology, romantic poetry, and pagan symbology around like rice at a wedding. She arrays her whispery voice in a synth-drenched coat of groovy ethnic sounds and ignores the boundaries separating "traditional," "pop," and "classical." McKennitt's 11-minute take on Alfred Noyes's poem "The Highwayman" may verge on the cliché, but clichés become clichés precisely because they work. And McKennitt's considerable musical skill and strong grasp of traditional song forms works, too. She's an excellent harpist/accordionist with a great ear for sonic links between various traditions -- the mournful cadences of "Skellig" certainly sound traditional, but which tradition? Irish? French? Eastern European? For The Book of Secrets, McKennitt threw a pungent handful of Indo-Arabian sounds into her new age teapot; on "Marco Polo," the flavor is alluring, sort of like a laid-back younger sister to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." Like a Hollywood adventure movie or a fantasy novel, The Book of Secrets requires a suspension of disbelief, yet it delivers myriad pleasures to those who can take it on its own terms. Erik Goldman

All Music Guide

The Book of Secrets, the follow-up to 1994's The Mask and Mirror (there was a Christmas EP, A Winter Garden, released in 1995), finds Loreena McKennitt in the same musical vein, mixing Celtic, Spanish, Italian, and new age to create her own distinct sound. The only problem is that she did not seem to progress much during the time between releases. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since she still knows how to write incredible melodies and layer instruments to produce peaceful images. "Night Ride Across the Caucasus" and "Dante's Prayer" are just two prime examples of this. And she continues her practice of setting classic poetry to music (Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman"). Expertly recorded at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios, this CD serves as a travelog of sorts for McKennitt, musically detailing her travels during 1995 and 1996. She provides the musical and lyrical inspirations from each location she visited, utilizing the instruments and sounds she encountered on her travels. Although she may be referred to as the Canadian Enya, McKennitt is definitely her own person, producing music of beauty and warmth. [The 2006 edition of the album includes enhanced content on CD-R.] Aaron Badgley