I absolutely love The Bone House by Stephen R. Lawhead! I’ve gotten hooked on “The Bright Empire” series, and my only regret is that I have to wait three more years to figure out what’s going to happen! Book two in the series picks up right where we last saw Kit, Mina, Giles, and the other characters we’ve come to know. Having discovered the secrets of Ley Travel, which is a system of travel between multiple dimensions and times, our heroes continue their search for the complete Skin Map, from the first book. They seem to have bad luck, and encounter the villainous Lord Burleigh and his henchmen at almost every turn, and must use what limited knowledge they have to “leap” to safety.Lawhead continues to inter-mix the modern speech of Kit and Mina with the more formal cadences and patterns of old-world dialogue with ease, and does a wonderful job of demonstrating the differences even in subtle ways during conversations. The idea of ley travel is terribly complex, yet is presented in such a way as to be understood. In no way does the reader feel as though they are being condescended to, or thought too simple-minded to understand.
My personal favorite is the last third of the book, where Kit finds himself in totally foreign surroundings. Not wanting to spoil it for any potential readers, I will only say that Kit finds himself in a time period well beyond any other he has visited at this point, and it opens his eyes to realities that he never considered before.
Having first been introduced to Lawhead’s work through the Bright Empires books, I have undertaken another of his series, and plan on exploring his other works. The Bone House is a fun and exciting second quest, and leaves the reader looking forward to more.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from booksneeze.com.
