Oh boy! Boy oh boy! What a tasty book we have here if we are someone who rubs our hands together with sheer delight at what we might find in the guru's garbage can! Nothing presented in this book is likely to actually change your view of the principals, but boy oh boy oh boy oh boy do we have fun going nowhere!

If you are one who thinks the authoress is the next coming of Gertrude Stein then nothing written here is likely to change your mind. If you are one who thinks that the authoress is an over-rated insecure spoiled upper-class heiress to a literary fortune with few real skills of her own then nothing written here is likely to change your mind. Her honesty is to be praised, even if it was encouraged by money from the publisher, but some of it might come under the category of "need to know" eh? She most certainly shares intimate details, some gross and some salacious, that I, for one, did not need to know. Many of these occur when she delves into her own dysfunctional family background, the rest when she rambles on in petty detail about her own difficulties in cult Castaneda. We segue to the theme of the book at hand in an attempt to show that the relationship with Carlos is the logical (very Freudian, by my view) outcome.

The power of brilliant marketing first rears its head in the subtitle when the truly "magical" name of Carlos Castaneda is presented. Next we are given rare photos and sketches of the elusive Carlos along with details of his "erased" history. This is followed by insights into his inner circle and their workings, again supplemented with long sought after photos. Then comes a publicity coup de grace, a graphic description of his sex life! To spice it all up, we are given colorful words, some delightful and some gross, from the language of South America. We are given a "cheat sheet" detailing the name changes and whereabouts of the close disciples. Finally we seal the deal with a copy of Castaneda's will. That describes the contents, but leaves a lot yet to be said.

If you are a died-in-the-wool, nothing-will-ever-shake-me, student and/or follower of the nagual Carlos Castaneda then, although you might wish this book did not exist, you will likely continue your shamanic practices and magical passes without interruption. If, on the other hand, you are one who perceives Castaneda to be a fraud, be it as a writer, or as a person, or as a guru, then this is the book you have been waiting for. Here his flaws are laid out for everyone to see. But wait a minute! Here we can also see his artistic bent, his enthusiasm for life, his brilliance as a storyteller, his ability as an entertainer, his cleverness around the famous, and his quick-footedness in political manipulations! In other words reading this tome is like tossing and tossing and tossing a giant salad in which every ingredient that you could find in the kitchen, as well as any ingredient you ever remembered having, or imagined having, has been added. Everything will see the light of day, like it or not!

Okay, I have just said the book has almost everything, and now I will tell you what was missing from my point of view. I read the whole book very carefully looking for any insights into Carlos's relationship with Don Juan, but except in a few details that are presented in an offhand manner, I found no new clues. What does that mean? Darn little in terms of this book's integrity or this book as entertainment "in the world." To those that grew up with the Don Juan books on their bookshelves while regarding Carlos Castaneda as the godfather of the "New Age" it is a bit of a disappointment. My personal view is that no one could successfully hide himself in the long-running saga that Carlos, the master storyteller, left us, and I don't think he did. I believe that his emotional instability, pettiness, and gigantic ego were all openly displayed for us, the readers, to see. At the same time much of the wisdom of Don Juan seems genuine, and that is why so many of us have kept an eye and an ear cocked toward the great deserts of the Southwest. It is very hard to imagine that Carlos Castaneda housed both the fool that he presented himself to be and the man of genuine wisdom that we came to know as Don Juan.

To see Carlos as the neurotic aging romantic fool that Amy sometimes presents him to be is interesting for sure, but most of us have noticed that he is not here to defend himself either. To see him as secretive (possibly even paranoid?) is not surprising, but is he the spiritually undeveloped inauthentic blunderer who she sometimes presents him to be? It is hard to decide how to take in some of the material that is presented because it seems schizoid, to be polite. I have many times marveled at odd-looking heterosexual couplings such as Michael Jackson marrying Lisa-Marie Presley (Is that off topic? The scary thing is that I actually don't think so!). What I really want to ask is if I am the only one that has a hard time imagining Amy Wallace and Carlos Castaneda together? Honeymooning in Mexico? Trysting in greater Los Angeles? Just being together, anywhere, as lovers? Before, during, and after the reading of this book (and using the author's own descriptions of events) it is challenging to make this relationship work as a viewer. It has the appearance of a relationship built on impossible premises - on fame, on reclusiveness, on convenience, on fantasies (by definition, not real), and above all else, the needs of off-the-wall sex.

Amy goes somewhere else with this altogether, presenting herself as an innocent member of a cult. Now that is interesting! She is both an empowered feminist and an overpowered victim. I referred to Amy and Carlos as lovers but other descriptive words and phrases more readily spring to mind ("dependent," "co-dependent," "battered," "verbally abused," "abused") when talking about their relationship. One phrase that does not occur to anyone with some knowledge of the esoteric is "sorcerer's apprentice" which just happens to be the title of this tome. Using Amy's own descriptions of events I saw no evidence of any shamanistic or pagan training, nor of any acceptance on her part of any "lessons" that might have theoretically occurred. This book is something that might have come from many a session that Amy spent on her analyst's couch [?] although it does a good job of taking Carlos down the garden path with her. It is hard to like Amy or Carlos as people, or Carlos Castaneda as a "guru" or "nagual" after reading this book. Of course none of this is late breaking news to anyone with their ear near the ground. Carlos continually presented himself as a pretentious stumbling bumbling idiot in his books and it always reminded me of someone that was pretending to be drunk, or so they thought, but in reality.they were drunk. In fact a friend of mine asked Carlos why he always presented himself as a know-nothing moron and the answer was adequate: "So that the reader can identify with me." Unfortunately, they did.and in great numbers.

What he needed was the heavy end of the Zen stick applied whenever he thought of himself as important, which likely was often. Our world is populated with those who wish to present themselves as "special" and so make expensive mistakes which impact the karmic lives of themselves as well as their followers. Carlos Castaneda as the manipulative cult leader is all too easy to accept as he guides his little, almost psychotic, group over ground that he himself has made quite bumpy. This bashing style is one that can only be successfully implemented by an egoless being, and there is no evidence that Carlos meets this criterion.

Is Amy a woman scorned, now offloading venomous criticisms? I do not think so. My impression is that this is the analytic purging of her personal history, an effort to move on in life by offering every sordid detail, every petty interaction, in the energetic dance she tried to embrace.and ultimately rejected. Some quotes from the chapter entitled 'The Truth about Hierarchy' now follow.

"It was startling to see how the sorcerers lied, or "stalked" as they put it, as naturally as the human beings they so completely dismissed breathed."

"Possibly there was a plan behind the travesties that followed, but I never unraveled it. Increasingly I came to believe that Carlos made up everything as he went. It was the only fitting explanation."

"It is a truly daunting to try to convey the level of envy, pettiness, and competition that pervaded many of our lives, ."

This chapter also quotes THE GURU PAPERS: MASKS OF AUTHORITARIAN POWER by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, which in itself is quite interesting.

In conclusion I believe Amy Wallace's story as told here by her to be accurate from her point of view. She did have the courage to present herself as the neurotic romantic in relentless pursuit of the truth. She accurately portrays her own struggle to function in the world as well as reporting (inadvertently) over and over again that nothing of the truly secret or esoteric levels of spiritual growth have arrived for her. Her concerns go to who is having sex with whom, where Carlos's sexual promiscuity came from, and counting orgasms. This is good material with which to sell books, folks, or with which to start a gossip column, but it is not terribly profound.

If, for any reason, you begin to read this book, and then stop, race ahead to the epilogue and finish up with that.

Enjoy!