This book starts of really well, then takes too many turns and loses itself in the details only to jump to an end that fast that I wondered if I skipped 10 chapters.The story deals with travels along lay lines through time and space and that is interesting and could be a lot more fun.The characte...
Finished “The Spirit Well’, the third book in the Bright Empires series by Lawhead. I do like Lawhead, but when I read The Skin Map a few years ago, that book seemed unresolved. After the second book, The Bone House, I gave up on the series. But this Christmas, now that he has published all 5 boo...
This is the fourth book in the Bright Empires series.I just can't adequately explain how amazing this series is, and this installment is no exception to that. Just when I think there's nothing else that can happen to surprise me, I am shocked. This book filled in more of the history of the Flinde...
I wanted to give this a higher rating, in part because it has a lot of impressive surprises and fine moments, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do so, so let's call this a 3.5 rounded down, howabout. Instead of picking up where we left off from the first volume, Lawhead skips us ahead 10 year...
Quentin is an acolyte that suddenly finds himself with a new mission when a wounded knight crashes down at his temple's door. But delivering the knight's letter to the Queen is far from the end of the matter. Nimrood the Necromancer has taken the king captive, and he plans to use king and kingdom...
Humility, if it comes at all, almost always comes too late.This book follows the life of Merlin from childhood to Arthur's birth. Merlin is my favourite character from Arthurian legend so I was super excited to start reading this book and it didn't disappoint me!I loved reading about Merlin as a ...
This is the second book in the Celtic Crusades. I thought it was well-written and moves at a good pace; it introduces the reader to other elements living in the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades [both Christian and non-Christian]. It follows the pilgrimage of Murdo's only son Duncan aft...
Not as good as the first two, but worth the read to finish out the series. The characters were in general less believable and largely one dimensional and a few plot points and reversals of fortune strained credibility still further. More than in the fist books, the "Crusaders" (in particular th...
Finally finished it! I've been so busy lately that this book took me way longer to finish than it should have. But I'm done now. I didn't like this book quite as well as the first two, although it was still great. I felt like too much time was covered in it. It starts out in the beginning with te...
This was a positively dreadful book which had a good idea but a poor delivery. I understand that it has a tremendous following, but I can only suppose there must be hordes of readers out there who enjoy pointless verbosity.The idea behind the story is time honored in fantasy: Guys from present fi...
Seven years of war with the Saecens are followed by an Vandali invasion while the country reels from drought and plague. Arthur's tired host defeats the Vandali but Arthur is seriously injured. The wounds are great and he is taken to Ynys Avallach where Charis, a queen of the fair folk resides....
Two stars is a bit harsh for this book, as Lawhead deftly weaves together two separate storylines for much of the book. Charis, our female protagonist in Atlantis, lives some interesting family drama. Meanwhile, Taliesin, our male counterpart, is growing up in Britain as a wunderkind with desti...
Quentin has settled in as King and has built a family for himself. But Nimrood the Necromancer has returned, hungry for revenge. Nimrood kidnaps the Prince and Toli and stirs up the people of the realm against Quentin and Quentin's god. Quentin finds himself unexpectedly alone and descends into m...
Stephen Lawhead writes very good historical/fantasy books with Celtic settings. He’s a sure thing; all of his books are quite enjoyable. So when I borrowed another of his books from a friend that wasn’t a Celtic fantasy book, but rather an outer-space sci-fi book, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Wo...
Awesome book! Here are a few quotes:p.139-140 "I set the keeping of Christ about thee;I send the guarding of the Great Light with thee,to possess thee, to protect thee,From death, from danger, from loss.Let the circling of the Three encompass thee in the battle to come.In the day of strife, let ...
This book was an odd ending to the trilogy. There were things I really liked and things I didn’t. Honestly, overall, I still don’t exactly know how I feel about this particular novel. I liked the second volume in the series the most and I do think this book the weakest in the series. Doesn’t mean...
I've been on a Lawhead kick lately; the "Celtic Crusades" series is another of his I've long put off reading for one reason or another. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I it. While told in third person, Lawhead avoids for the most part the "telling rather than showing" of his characters' ...
Lawhead is one of my favorite authors, and he followed through well on this book. This was my second time reading it.Stephen Lawhead is an expert in Celtic history and mythology, and most of his stories are set in ancient Britain and/or Ireland. He retells Celtic legends as historical novels (r...
This is the sequel to 'the search for fierra' and was a good read. It starts off with Treet inside the archives in Dome while Crocker is getting settled in in the Blue Forest and the other two members of the original party, Pizzle and Yarden, settling in amongst the Fierri. Treet is trying to l...
My review from http://grahamchops.blogspot.com/2009/...(Whole trilogy reviewed)This one is over a year in the making. I first read The Paradise War last summer on audio when my mom got me the book for my birthday. I'd read Lawhead's Hood and Scarlet and totally loved them, so I wanted to get into...
I read this for the first time shortly after it first came out at the suggestion of one of my parents' friends back in the late 80s. I remember being unsure of certain aspects of the book as it seemed to delve into what was called "New Age" beliefs and technologies based on those beliefs. I do ...
Accidentally hit something that deleted my review before I saved it. Grrrrr. I read the book that comes before this one, Hood, and began this one right away. I was kind of disappointed that instead of going right on from the previous book which ended rather abruptly, this one began a year or t...