24 October 2011

Bone House - Stephen R. Lawhead




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*This post is part of the CSFF Book tour please visit the other blogs participating.  You can find the links above under CSFF Blog Tour Participants.


One piece of the skin map has been found. Now the race to unravel the future of the furture turns deadly.
Kit Livingstone met his great grandfather Cosimo in a rainy alley in London where he discovered the reality of alternate realities.
Now he's on the run—and on a quest—trying to understand the impossible mission he inherited from Cosimo: to restore a map that charts the hidden dimensions of the multiverse. Survival depends on staying one step ahead of the savage Burley Men.
The key is the Skin Map—but where it leads and what it means, Kit has no idea. The pieces have been scattered throughout this universe and beyond.
Mina, from her outpost in seventeenth-century Prague, is quickly gaining both the experience and the means to succeed in the quest. Yet so are those with evil intent who, from the shadows, are manipulating great minds of history for their own malign purposes.
Those who know how to use ley lines have left their own world behind to travel across time and space—down avenues of Egyptian sphinxes, to an Etruscan tufa tomb, a Bohemian coffee shop, and a Stone Age landscape where universes collide—in this, the second quest to unlock the mystery of The Bone House.

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This is the second book in the Bright Empires Series by S. Lawhead and like the first (read my review of book one here) I read this book voraciously.  The wonderful Mr. Lawhead never fails to entertain.  The "characters of the BRIGHT EMPIRES SERIES" are not time-traveling explorers, a la H.G. Wells....Rather [they] are bouncing around a multidimensional universe in the equivalent of a helicopter that can travel in any of a thousand different directions...with a dose of time slippage thrown in for good measure"  That description will get you close to understanding what this story is about.  What sets Mr. Lawhead apart from so many authors is the absolute authority with which he plies his craft.  The details are rich and evocative,  the characters are extremely well thought out and realized, the intricacies of the plot are flawless.  This tale, in the hands of a master, is nothing short of enthralling.  I wholly enjoyed this book.  I would rate this book ten...no fifteen big, fat fabulous stars.

The third book in the "BRIGHT EMPIRES SERIES" is slated for release in September 2012.


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Stephen R. Lawhead

Stephen Lawhead is an internationally acclaimed author of mythic history and imaginative fiction. He was born in 1950, in Nebraska in the USA. His early life was lived in America where he earned a university degree in Fine Arts and attended theological seminary for two years.
His first professional writing was done at Campus Life magazine in Chicago, where he was an editor and staff writer. During his five years at Campus Life he wrote hundreds of articles and several non-fiction books.
After a brief and unsuccessful foray into the music business—as president of his own record company—he launched his free-lance career in 1981. In the Hall of the Dragon King was his first novel.
In 1986 the Lawhead family moved to Britain so that Stephen could conduct research for the PENDRAGON CYCLE books. They settled there permanently in 1990, with some years spent living in Austria and a sabbatical in the United States.
In addition to his twenty-four novels, he has written nine children's books, many of them originally offered to his two sons, Drake and Ross. He is married to Alice Slaikeu Lawhead, with whom he has collaborated on books and articles. They make their home in Oxford, England.
Stephen's non-fiction, fiction and children's titles have variously been published in twenty-four foreign languages. He has won numerous industry awards, and in 2003 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by the University of Nebraska.
His middle name is ‘Ray’.


* I received an advance copy from the publisher for purposes of review. I was in no way obligated to write a review much less a favorable one. The opinions stated herein are all my own.

3 comments:

Rebecca LuElla Miller said...

Hi praise for this book, indeed! Glad you liked it so much. "Well realized characters" -- that's an excellent description of them.

Hope your readers jump on this one right away -- or perhaps after first reading The Skin Map.

Becky

Bruce Hennigan said...

Good review. You seemed to like it a lot. I can't wait for the third book!

MLH said...

@Bruce, Thanks:) You know, I really like Stephen Lawhead and have been reading his books since my early twenties (which is longer ago than I'd Like!). I was just this minute lamenting the fact that we have to wait almost a year before his next book...

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