CSFF Tour - The Shadow Lamp, Day 2

In Which The Blogger Gets A Hand Cramp By Trying To Keep It All Straight

Hey, the CSFF Tour is continuing the focus on The Shadow Lamp, the fourth book in the five book Bright Empires series by Stephen Lawhead.

Lawhead is a prolific fantasy author with 24 books to his name. He's written about the Crusades to Robin Hood, from Byzantium to a Celtic fantasy land, an Arthur series and kids books. Now he calls Bright Empires his most ambitious work yet.

It's hard to bring together four different books into three short blog posts. But, that's my task today.

Here's a very quick run-down of the previous books.

The Skin Map - This kicks off the adventure by introducing us to Kit Livingstone, the main character who has inherited his family's skill of ley travel, the journeying between dimensions of the multiverse. Except he's not very skilled at it. He loses his girlfriend Mina in 16th century Prague, ends up betrayed and left to die in an Egyptian tomb, only to be rescued by said Mina, who is a quicker study than her boyfriend. It turns out a lot of people are looking for the Skin Map, a map made of the skin of Arthur Flinders-Petrie, a man skilled at ley travel who tattooed directions on his own skin using strange symbols as code. Guess he won't lose that map...

The Bone House - Now there are more stories bouncing back and forth in time. We learn the origin of the villainous Lord Burleigh, who was the bad guy in the previous book. Arthur is looking for a way to save his wife. Kit and Mina try to dodge Burleigh, and Kit being Kit gets stranded in the Stone Age and ends up in a Bone House. Funny how that worked out...

The Spirit Well - Now Kit stumbles on a way out of the Stone Age and is reunited once again with Mina. A new traveler, Cassandra Clarke, an American paleontologist, has fallen through time and has been found by the Zetetic Society, a group dedicated to ley travel and watching out for good. If everyone could just find the blasted Skin Map, everything would be alright. Of course, there are different folks with their own agendas weaving through time. And one traveler might just have broken the universe...

Whew. There's a lot to chew on there. Lawhead is a skilled writer and researcher. He travels widely and is very good with the historical detail, so the various locales are very intriguing. He writes in a slightly detached style giving the book a subtle whimsy and British feel. So far, very good. Like he says, the books are unique in the speculative fiction field.

If you want to see all of my posts on the Bright Empires series, here's the link to all the tags. Fittingly, like the narration in the series the posts don't necessarily come in order. You can also go to Stephen Lawhead's Facebook page or author page. Finally, Becky Miller is our tour guide, and she gathers all the posts together here from all of the participants. I'll have my review of The Shadow Lamp tomorrow.

Of course, if you can figure out time travel, you can read it right now.
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