Tag: stephen lawhead

CSFF Blog Tour: Post-Script

Shannon

I don’t have a whole lot to say, but, well, here I am talking anyway.

This is the last day of the last CSFF blog tour for the Bright Empires series, and I wanted to wrap up with a final note – a post-script, if you will. The Bright Empires series would not be enjoyed by everyone; to some extent, it is a specialized taste, an unusual amalgam of historical, fantastical, and science fiction held together by old-fashioned writing. The style of the whole is old-school – slower, fuller, and richer than the modern style. You know that Stephen Lawhead is a successful author because they let him write books like this.

Not in spite of that, but partially because of it, I enjoyed the Bright Empires series first to last. I gave my reasons yesterday: the convincing characters, the skilled writing, the richness of its history and the fascination of its sci-fi and fantasy concepts. It was quite a journey, and I’m glad for it. For that, I owe kudos to Stephen Lawhead …

… and thanks to Becky Miller, who has for years ably run the blog tour that introduced me to the Bright Empires series and to Stephen Lawhead.

CSFF Blog Tour: The Fatal Tree

Shannon

The universe, they say, is constantly expanding. If it ever stops expanding, it will then begin to contract. Once it begins to contract, it will eventually collapse, and that will be the End of Everything. Everything is a lot, especially in the multiverse.

In The Fatal Tree, the conclusion of Stephen Lawhead’s five-part Bright Empires saga, our heroes face the greatest calamity of all. They must find a way to save the multiverse – to travel back, by way of the fatal tree, to that place where everything was undone.

The Fatal Tree, with its doppelgangers and space observatory chapters, probably has the strongest flavor of sci-fi of any Bright Empires novel. The historical element, by contrast, fades a bit into the background; it maintains a presence, most crucially in the confounding of times and eras, but there is no in-depth plunge to compare with the explorations of The Skin Map.

The first half of the book is less urgent in confronting the End of Everything than I would have expected. Lawhead spends a couple chapters wrapping up storylines from the previous books, and he also pursues another storyline whose importance to the ultimate resolution is not immediately obvious. The people who are trying to avert the catastrophe don’t get very far, or go around in circles, or mostly make scientific measurements of the coming end.

The conclusion of the book was far more focused and urgent than the opening. Still, in one important respect I would have changed it. [By the way: SPOILERS!] I would have had Arthur Flinders-Petrie choose not to save his wife, rather than simply be prevented from doing so. It would have been more satisfying, and more emotional; it would even have made the protagonists’ victory more definite. I also felt that, in a way, Lawhead owed it to Arthur, as an important and good (as in, heroic) character, to give him that moment. I even felt Lawhead owed that moment to us as readers: Weren’t we invested in Arthur and his story? [SPOILERS OFF]

Finally – I’m just going to park all my complaints about the story right here – I was unpleasantly surprised by the sudden cursing in this book. It was a little odd to have a main protagonist start cursing at the end of a five-book series, though I would rather have him curse only in the last book than in all of them.

Yet and all, I enjoyed The Fatal Tree. I enjoyed it more than The Shadow Lamp, and probably even The Spirit Well. One reason for that is, I’ll admit straight off, the sidelining of the Zetetic Society, who had in earlier books contributed pages and pages of vague yet disagreeable philosophizing. I was always suspicious of them and now, at the end of the series, when they have still done nothing wrong … I’m still suspicious.

More importantly, I admired what Lawhead did with Burleigh, his villain. I always enjoyed Burleigh as a villain, and the journey Lawhead charted for him was marvelous. I have rarely seen an author who could, with so much credibility, draw so much out of one character.

I also liked the confusion of times and even of the multiverse; it was very interesting and appropriately sinister. As a sci-fi fan, I liked the ‘cosmic loop’ as well.

Now, having criticized one element of the ending, I must praise the whole. It was magnificent, brilliantly imagined and shot through with powerful emotions. Kit’s vision of God had a sense of mystery and of awe, and so a certain glory. I appreciated, too, the happy endings, so well-painted, and the nod to the first book at the very end of the last book.

At the end of this series, I commend The Fatal Tree – and the entire Bright Empires series – as a work of complex characters, fascinating concepts, rich historical milieus, masterful writing, and fantastic imagination.


In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

CSFF Blog Tour: Intrepid Explorers, Intrepid Bloggers

Shannon

It was four years ago that Thomas Nelson published The Skin Map, by Stephen Lawhead, and so began the Bright Empires series. Every fall since then, a new Bright Empires book has come out: The Bone House, The Spirit Well, The Shadow Lamp. We of the CSFF blog tour reviewed every one, boldly following the intrepid explorers of the multiverse in their travels through time and space, tracing the cosmic snarls with vim and mental acuity and carefully made charts.

The Fatal Tree, the newest Bright Empires novel, came out in October, bang on time. Now the CSFF is touring it – continuing, and concluding, the tradition, for with The Fatal Tree, the Bright Empires series finally comes home.

So come and join us for the last tour. The publisher offered temporary tattoos to the tourers, supposed to resemble the tattoos worn by Arthur Flinders-Petrie, the Man Who Was The Map (long story). The tourers who accepted will be posting pictures of themselves, or someone they know, sporting the tattoos; Julie Bihn has done so already.

I personally will not be sporting any tattoos, but let the record show that I am typing this up wearing glittery nail polish. And now, for the links …

The Fatal Tree on Amazon;

Stephen Lawhead’s website;

Stephen Lawhead’s Facebook page;

and the (occasionally tattooed) tourers:

Julie Bihn
Thomas Clayton Booher
Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
Karri Compton
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Jason Joyner
Janeen Ippolito
Carol Keen
Emileigh Latham
Rebekah Loper
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Jalynn Patterson
Writer Rani
Nathan Reimer
Audrey Sauble
Jojo Sutis
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler

CSFF Blog Tour: To Speak Randomly

Shannon

I thought that, for my final considerations on The Shadow Lamp and the Bright Empires series, I would use a kind of essay format, as this would let me bring up all sorts of random observations without having to coherently connect them. Feel free to answer any or all questions in the comments: I won’t grade you.

So let’s begin. [Alert: spoilers ahead.]


Kit is inducted to the secrets of the multiverse by his great-grandfather, Cosimo Livingstone. Cosimo vanished back in 1893, leaving his wife to fend for herself and their three children, but as he explained to Kit, he accidentally walked a ley line to another dimension while going to buy sausages. (Ah!) In The Spirit Well, we finally meet Cosimo’s society of Questors. There we learn that the Questors are so fluent in ley travel that they can spend years away from home and return a few days from the time they left.

Q: So apparently Cosimo could have gone back to his wife and children, but he never did. Doesn’t that make him a real jerk?

Speaking of Cosimo, when he met Kit for the first time, he gave him a detailed summary of his life, including his current dating relationship and prospects.

Q: What was he doing? Spying?

In The Shadow Lamp, the Zetetic Society resolves to “save the universe and everything in it from total annihilation or die in the attempt.”

Q: Am I the only who thought that was kind of funny?

When Cass joined the Zetetics, Tess told her that she had come for such a time as this: To look for Tess’s old flame Cosimo. Tess needed someone to go find him, and there was Cass! Nothing happens by coincidence.

Later, when Tony Clarke came looking for his daughter, Mrs. Peelstick accepted him and chatted on – until he asked about the operations of her Zetetic Society. Then she claimed not to know that he really was Cass’s father, which is why she could talk about how Cass had been in Damascus and where she had stayed there, but not talk about what the Zetetics did. No, sir! It was all for Cass’s protection.

Q: Would you trust these people? Because I wouldn’t.

Arthur Flinders-Petrie died in Egypt. Xian-Li died in Egypt. Benedict might have. Charles nearly did. Cosimo and Henry died in Egypt – and if they hadn’t been rescued, so would have Kit and Giles.

Q: You know what I think? I think they should stay out of Egypt.

Twice in The Shadow Lamp, Lord Burleigh fortified himself for the moment of peril by gulping down a swig of liquor. Then he behaved courageously. Still, there was the liquor first.

Q: Not quite as strong as he always appears, is he?

Stephen Lawhead, collector of rare and unusual words and master of fancy, old-time writing, uses the word “jounce” in The Shadow Lamp. Which struck me, because I have heard the word before – used by fresh-from-the-backwoods Tammy in the film Tammy and the Bachelor. She told the bachelor that “joggling boards” are benches you can jounce on, used for courting and for joggling babies to sleep. These are related phenomenon.

Q: Isn’t this the most irrelevant observation in the entire post?

CSFF Blog Tour: The Shadow Lamp

Shannon

Can you think of anything more frightening than the End of Everything, the total collapse of the universe?

I can. I saw that TV show where the aliens sent ships to burn up every nation on Earth, city by city. If we’re all going to die, the universe collapsing frankly sounds like an easier way to go.

But can you think of anything more complete?

In The Shadow Lamp, the fourth book of the Bright Empires series, Stephen Lawhead finally reveals what is at stake: everything. This is the great advancement The Shadow Lamp makes on the Bright Empires saga. Otherwise, the book mostly builds – on the largest ideas of the series, on the established characters. It explains much – from the Omega Point to the nature of the multiverse, from the Burley Men to Charles’ change.

Gianni’s metaphysical exposition was, I think, the singular misstep of the book. For one thing, it contained statements a Christian would have to take with generosity. (“The future is not controlled in any way” – yeah, okay, if you want to sum up your views of free will and the nature of Time in that misleading way.) For another, Gianni’s address sounded curiously like the vague philosophizing of the Zetetics, whom I do not believe Gianni had ever met until about five minutes before his speech.

Gianni was a priest. Yet in this exposition, he didn’t talk as if his intellectual foundation were in the creeds of Christianity or in the Bible; he didn’t speak the language of Scripture. He spoke like – well, like the Zetetics, who are recognizably theistic but not demonstrably Christian.

The threatened annihilation of the universe, like so many elements of science fiction, requires a small suspension of disbelief. On an intellectual level I found it compelling; on an emotional level, not so much. Paradoxically, the annihilation of the universe is a less disturbing idea when you have a religion that makes a doctrine of the terrible end of the world. When it comes to “harrowing visions”, The Shadow Lamp has nothing on Revelation.

As characters talked about the awful cataclysm of the universe collapsing, it reminded me of the biblical picture of the heavens and earth wearing out like a garment. “Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same” – God goes on. And so will we.

But at the end, Lawhead finally got me. Not that the final vision he gave made the threat seem any more dire, but it moved me from thinking about the annihilation of the universe (God and us remaining) to “what it would be like to witness the End of Everything”.

The end was the best part of the book, and probably the only part that was truly marvelous. The hinted cause of the multiverse’s destabilization was both surprising and satisfying, and it carried delicious potential. The epilogue was a tremendous portrait of Christ’s love meeting the dark heart of a lost man, and it also suggested an incredible possibility.

The Shadow Lamp is not the best installment of the Bright Empires saga, but it is a vital one. And it accomplished the necessity of any book in a series, and the great mark of success in a novel: It left me wanting more.


In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

CSFF Blog Tour: Anniversary Edition

Shannon

So the CSFF blog tour begins again. This month’s subject is The Shadow Lamp, the fourth book in Stephen Lawhead’s Bright Empires series.

I’ve enjoyed every blog tour I’ve done with the CSFF, but I always have a special fondness for the books of the Bright Empires series. This is, in large part, because of the books themselves, but also because The Skin Map, the first book of the series, was several firsts to me.

It was my first introduction to Stephen Lawhead, and I was delighted. The playing with Time, the alternate realities, the old-fashioned writing style, the historical details, the philosophical considerations, the sheer depth of the story in so many ways – I had never read anything quite like it.

The Skin Map was also the first book I toured with the CSFF. For that matter, it was the first blog tour I did of any description. Through the CSFF, and beginning with The Skin Map, I discovered interesting books and talented authors, became introduced to a community of Christian SF readers, and acquired an entire bookshelf of new books in my favorite genre, for which all I had to do was write reviews.

We toured The Skin Map in the fall of 2010. Every fall since, we have toured the next book in the Bright Empires series – The Bone House, The Spirit Well, and now The Shadow Lamp. Every Bright Empires tour feels like the anniversary of my joining the CSFF. The series is supposed to conclude next year, and I suppose the only truly poetic thing I could do would be to tour the final Bright Empires book and quit immediately afterward.

I’m planning to put up my review of The Shadow Lamp tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some links to chew on:

The Shadow Lamp on Amazon;

Stephen Lawhead’s website;

Stephen Lawhead’s Facebook page;

and please, please check out the blog tour:

Julie Bihn
Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
Karri Compton
Theresa Dunlap
April Erwin
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Becky Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Rebekah Loper
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirriam Neal
Writer Rani
Nathan Reimer
Chawna Schroeder
Jojo Sutis
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Rachel Wyant
Phyllis Wheeler
Deborah Wilson

Review: Tuck

Shannon

Blood is thicker than water. That’s why you can’t get rid of your relatives. It’s also why you can generally expect certain things from them – like a place to spend the holidays, or rent when you absolutely need it.

Or, maybe, troops to fight your guerrilla insurgency. Maybe.

In Tuck, the long war has exacted its price from rebel and conqueror alike. Now the sheriff in his town is as desperate as Bran Hood in his forest. And desperate men do desperate things.

Tuck is the concluding book of the King Raven Trilogy, and it was probably wise to send characters on adventures away from the greenwood. It allowed new characters and new places to freshen the story. At the same time, the old characters are not left to stagnate, and Bran himself fills and finally outgrows the Robin Hood legend.

In this book Stephen Lawhead shows again his capacity to surprise. He also shows his limitless attention to history, both its small details and broad realities. History makes impressive scenery for his books, but it is more than that. Here, as in other novels, Lawhead turns it to fine and sometimes startling uses.

After reading so much of Scarlet from Will Scarlet’s perspective, it was interesting to experience him in Tuck entirely from Lawhead’s omniscient viewpoint. Will was still enjoyable, yet he never reached the charm and brightness he had in Scarlet. Readers have sometimes complained that Lawhead’s characters are distant and hard to connect with. Maybe he should write more from the first-person.

As a telling of Robin Hood, the King Raven Trilogy is unorthodox, but credible enough for its purposes. Lawhead brilliantly retained the concept of Robin fighting for the true king while appearing to throw it away. He did justice to the characters of the Robin Hood legend, with the exception of Little John. Iwan (as Lawhead renamed him) was a missed opportunity.

The one complaint I will enter against Tuck is that it had a death for, I think, no other reason than to make us feel bad. Aside from that, I enjoyed the book. The characters were satisfying, and consistent even when they changed; some were appropriately likeable, others appropriately despicable. The long journey of the King Raven Trilogy came to a rewarding end, all the different elements woven together.Tuck proved a fulfilling book and a fulfilling conclusion.

And my review would not be complete if I did not add that the epilogue was a masterstroke.

CSFF Blog Tour: Proceeding by Inquiry

Shannon

When the Bright Empires series began with The Skin Map, I found the religious element to be scant. It grew stronger in The Bone House, a quiet but steady undercurrent throughout the novel. In The Spirit Well, religion has a stronger presence yet. This comes mainly from the Zetetic Society, a group devoted to exploring the multiverse. They are the Questors spoken of in the first book – whom I had, I confess, clean forgotten.

In one scene, the Questors Brendan and Rosemary try to persuade a young woman named Cass to join their society. Brendan declared to her, “Our aim is nothing less than achieving God’s own purpose for His creation.”

When Cass asked what purpose that would be, Rosemary responded, “Why, the objective manifestation of the supreme values of goodness, beauty, and truth, grounded in the infinite love and goodness of the Creator.”

You would think that a sentence with so many nouns would have more meaning.

A little later in the conversation, Brendan expanded on his theme: “When the universe reaches the point where more people desire the union, harmony, and fulfillment intended by the Creator, then the balance will have been tipped, so to speak, and the cosmos will proceed to the Omega Point.”

And Rosemary elaborated, “This world, this universe, transfigured – the New Heaven and the New Earth. … Human destiny lies in the mastery of the cosmos for the purpose of creating new experiences of goodness, beauty, and truth for all living things.”

I don’t really know what they’re talking about. But I know this: The Bible also speaks of a new heaven and earth – but not this universe transfigured. This universe, this world will be destroyed. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus Christ declared, “but my words will never pass away.”

Much is obscure in the Bible’s end-times teachings, but this is clear: When God makes everything new, it will not be because “more people” want it. And I at least am suspicious of any philosophy that holds that it is the destiny of humanity to create new experiences of goodness and truth for all living things.

C. S. Lewis once said that no creature is so bad as something that is going to be human and isn’t yet. And I would contend that no religion is so bad as one that is going to be Christian and isn’t yet. I wondered if the Questors’ talk was so much psuedo-Christian jabberwocky. But I can’t say that it is, and for two reasons.

One is that some of what they say is solid. The other is that I can’t understand the rest of what they say. Their language is esoteric enough to create unease, and vague enough to create confusion. It confounds understanding. Their words are lofty, up in that airy region where the line between being high-minded and being fuzzy-minded is exceedingly fine.

The heroes give other signs. Brother Lazarus, a Catholic monk, joins with them; Mina finds the “daily office” (of praying) to be meaningful; Kit is moved to offer this prayer at the death of a primeval hunter: “Creator of all that is and will be, we give you back one of your creations. His life in this world was taken from him, but we ask that you receive him into the life of the world that has no end.”

None of this makes me trust the Questors more, but it does make me trust the author more.

The Zetetic Society gives other reasons for unease. Toward the end of The Spirit Well, Cass meets a Questor named Tess. Tess derides religious dogma and revivalists, and says, “Anyone who tells you he knows the mind of God is selling something.”

She’s not bad at selling things herself. She gives Cass her first mission: searching for Cosimo Livingstone, another Questor and the man Tess almost married. This, Tess assures Cass, is why she came to the Society. “There is no such thing as coincidence.”

They often say that in the Bright Empires series, and usually it has a noble ring. But not here. In this context – You are here because we need someone to look for my old flame; nothing happens by accident! – it seems more than a little self-serving.

“Zetetic”, by the way, is a real word; it means “proceeding by inquiry; investigating”. Samuel Rowbotham founded a number of zetetic societies in America and Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. Their purpose was to promote the belief that the earth is flat.

CSFF Blog Tour: The Spirit Well

Shannon

There are certain things you know. The ground is solid, death is death, yesterday is past, and tomorrow is coming. But if ever you cross the ley lines and slip into the muliverse, you may end up deciding that you never really knew anything.

In The Spirit Well, Stephen Lawhead continues the grand adventure of the multiverse. New explorers join on the trails, others slip – or slink – into the background. The villain puts in a subdued role; what little we see of him shows mostly how he got to the point of menacing all the heroes. In the present – and I use the term loosely – he mostly grouses.

There is a sense, in this novel, of watching the characters becoming. Sometimes we see how they came to be what they are; sometimes it reveals more clearly what they are now. (I always knew there was something wrong with that Douglas person.)

More rarely, we get a glimpse of what they will be. Kit Livingstone, the protagonist, finally begins to grow decisively away from who he used to be. So often the victim of events, he gets a turn at being the instigator of them. The development is welcome, and I hope Stepehen Lawhead persists in it.

The Spirit Well is shorter than the previous books, coming in at less than four hundred pages. I thought the pace was brisker, though it was never fast. All of Lawhead’s books that I have read are works of breadth rather than speed.

The religion of the series grows stronger and more specific in this book, though still not fully discernible. You would need a whole post to do justice to this point, and I plan to give it.

Ancient Egypt remains a favored historical milieu, but here it departs from strict history. I have heard of Akhenaten and his attempt to supplant polytheism in Egypt with the religion of Aten. I have not heard that it had anything to do with the Habiru who lived in the Gesen and worshiped El.

Like The Bone House, The Spirit Well backtracks to events that took place during the first book – or before it. I gave it some thought and decided that the series still makes more sense if you start at the beginning. But not much more. This, like the omniscient style Lawhead uses, is something people will like if it’s the sort of thing they like.

The Spirit Well is the third book in the Bright Empires Series. It is still, for me, a happy discovery. These are books of incredible richness, incredible fullness; there is a world in those pages you will never reach the end of. Compelling, unique, and ultimately satisfying, The Spirit Well is a journey worth the effort.


And now, curious readers, your links:

The Spirit Well on Amazon;

Stephen Lawhead’s website and Facebook page;

and always most enlightening, the blog roll:

Jim Armstrong
Julie Bihn
Red Bissell
Jennifer Bogart
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Beckie Burnham
Brenda Castro
Jeff Chapman
Christine
Karri Compton
Theresa Dunlap
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Jeremy Harder
Bruce Hennigan
Timothy Hicks
Janeen Ippolito
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emileigh Latham
Rebekah Loper
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Anna Mittower
Joan Nienhuis
Lyn Perry
Nathan Reimer
Chawna Schroeder
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Dona Watson
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler

And: In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Hold That Thought

Shannon

In my reading at Speculative Faith and Becky Miller’s blog, I have recently come across musings over whether or not Christian speculative fiction is “weird”. This has left me pondering a slightly different question: Why is it called weird?

It occurred to me that the answer to that question can be found, in some degree, in The Spirit Well, a novel by Stephen Lawhead I recently finished. Then it occurred to me that the blog tour for The Spirit Well begins next week, and it will run three days, and if I have something to say concerning the book, I should probably say it then.

So hold that thought.

The Spirit Well is the third book of the Bright Empires series. The first book, The Skin Map, was my maiden CSFF blog tour; a year ago, we toured the second book also. (It’s titled The Bone House. Do you sense a theme?)

I’ll see you, hopefully, on the tour, to discuss The Spirit Well and other issues of weirdness in Christian speculative fiction.