Stephen Lawhead’s THE BONE HOUSE — A Full Review

Here we are once again, folks, the CSFF Blog Tour of Stephen R. Lawhead’s THE BONE HOUSE!

It is just plain hard to believe that it’s been a year since we reviewed THE SKIN MAP and the treasure hunt I held last year.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an extra copy to give away this year, much less a signed-by-the-author one, sorry!

By the way, the cover that I have is different, and BETTER than the one on the left. I don’t know why they changed it, but the image you see must have been an early draft which they improved.

I really like the ice-blue theme, which is an awesome counter-point to the red-orange theme of the first novel. These book covers are just TOP-NOTCH in my opinion.

If you haven’t read my THE SKIN MAP reviews, here they are:

• Stephen Lawhead’s THE SKIN MAP ? Day 1
• Stephen Lawhead’s THE SKIN MAP ? Day 2
• Stephen Lawhead’s THE SKIN MAP ? Day 3
• The Laity Lodge Writers Retreat: A Travelogue (Where I met Stephen Lawhead in person)

THE PLOT

Here is the description from Amazon:

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.

So, the plot of THE BONE HOUSE is similar to the THE SKIN MAP … we alternate between multiple storylines: Kit’s, Wilhelmina’s, Arthur Flinders-Petrie, Douglas Flinders-Petrie, Lord Burleigh, Lady Faythe, etc.

And all the while, poor, hapless Kit gets himself lost and in great danger. Or is he? You won’t know until the very end of the novel where Lawhead pulls a big surprise.

The complication, here, is that everything gets more complicated. Not only are we jumping around in physical location, but we are also jumping back and forward in time at these locations, AND back and forward in time during the character’s lives. That doesn’t even bring up the fact that these different locations are actually in different dimensions.

It all adds up to a wonderful mystery that you really need to keep your head on straight for?both to unravel it and just keep up with the author.

And that brings up a big point: This novel is not an action-packed thriller. Rather it is truly a mystery set in time and space to solve the riddles of the universe. The back cover says it this way, which is an apt description:

The Bright Empires series ? from acclaimed author Stephen Lawhead ? is a unique blend of epic treasure hunt, ancient history, alternate realities, cutting-edge physics, philosophy, and mystery. The result is a page-turning adventure like no other.

So put on your hat?no, your thinking hat, no, your thinking helmet, power it up?and get ready to chase after the ultimate prize in the multiverse: The Well of Souls.

THE CHARACTERS

Kit Livingstone	I used to think of him as the “main” character, but it is obvious that he is just one among many?Wilhelmina almost playing a more important role.
Cosimo Livingstone	Kit’s dead great-grandfather. Kit is trying to take up from him the task of finding the Skin Map.
Sir Henry Fayth	Cosimo’s dead partner, he is the uncle of…
Lady Fayth	Sir Henry’s snobbish, traitorous niece. What is she up to now? Read and see.
Giles	A servant of Sir Henry, he joins with Kit to help out in the quest.
Wilhelmina	Kit’s former girlfriend, who ends up saving the day in more ways than you can spell apple strudel.
Etzel	Wilhelmina’s partner in their bakery, which becomes the scene of a long awaited for confrontation. Just you wait!
Arthur Flinders-Petrie	The ultimate time and space traveler, he is the man whom everyone else is after, in one way or another, hint, hint!
Xian-Li	The woman whom Arthur marries.
Lord Burleigh	Hiss! As the villain of the novel, he is a bit more absent than I expected. Still, he shows up at just the right time. If you’ve seen the book trailer for the first novel, THE SKIN MAP, something happens in this book that is shown at the end of that film. Hint, hint!
Douglas Flinders-Petrie	I think this man is the grandson or great-grandson of Arthur. He is after the pieces of the Skin Map, as well as their interpretation. The fascinating thing about him is that I can’t tell if he is up to good or bad.
Charles Flinders-Petrie	I think he is the grandson of Arthur, and he only comes in during the epilogue, so I won’t give away his role in the story.
Benedict Flinders-Petrie	Arthur and Xian-Li’s son, who almost died before he was born.

THE CRAFT

Lawhead, as always, is at his best here, writing not only authentically, but in a brilliant way. Here’s a sample from page 55:

Just as [Kit] stretched himself out and pulled the blanket over him, the dog-and-donkey chorus began?each setting the others off until the entire Nile valley reverberated with the barking and baying cacophony.

Since sleep seemed to be the last activity any creature was allowed to pursue in this place, Kit lay on his back and stared up at a sky ablaze with far more stars than he had ever seen in any one sky. The Milky Way, never so much as glimpsed in his London, and most often seen elsewhere as a thin dusting of stars, was in the arid atmosphere of Egypt a bright band of luminous cloud. He watched in wonder as the dazzling show slowly wheeled across the gleaming dome of the sky, spinning majestically around the fixed bright point of the Nail of Heaven. And although the moon was late rising, the fulgent starlight radiating from the cloudless heavens cast hard shadows on the earthly landscape below.

Wonderful! Lawhead writes this way not only because he is a fine author who has honed his craft to a soul-cutting edge, but he writes this way because he has visited these places himself.

I can just picture Stephen trying to fall asleep in some remote part of the Nile valley and the donkeys and dogs start howling, and he makes a mental note to share that tidbit with us all.

MY GRIPES (IF THEY CAN BE CALLED THAT)

Let me just say right off that these are very minor points, and not only that, but each gripe contains a real positive nugget as well.

The Bone House Itself

To me, it was an incredible way to end the novel, but I felt that there needed to be more foreshadowing, either about the bone house, or about their quest. Why are they doing all this skin-map-chasing anyway? More time on Kit and Mina’s motivations would have helped a lot.

The positive nugget, however, is that book two ended the way I thought book five might end (and it was exciting).

This means that if what I thought of as the ultimate goal has been achieved in the second book, then perhaps there is a far greater goal that has not even been imagined. The mystery deepens yet more.

The Stone Age

My gripe here is how the people of the stone age look. They are described as true “cave-men” in looks.

Kit even compares them to a cartoon “Thag” he has seen, which I can only assume refers to The Far Side cartoon:

So what DO stone age people look like? Well, here is an article titled Forensics Put a Face to a Stone Age Boy’s Remains.

This article was published four days ago over at History.com (The History Channel’s website) that uses forensic techniques to recreate a stone age boy’s face:

To put it mildly, if I saw this kid at Wal-Mart, I wouldn’t even blink. Now, to be fair, Lawhead’s cave-men live in another dimension, but I still think it was a bit unscientific to paint them the way he did. However … this is fiction, so take it with a grain of salt.

On the positive side, I do think Lawhead did some cool things here, like giving them telepathy, and making it clear that they are created and each one has a soul.

MY RECOMMENDATION

If you like Stephen Lawhead, then you will love THE BONE HOUSE, as well as THE SKIN MAP. If you like a good mystery / treasure hunt with touches of philosophy and science, then you will adore these books. Recommended for adults on up.

For other reviews, check out the other CSFF Blog Tour Members:

Noah Arsenault Red Bissell Thomas Clayton Booher Beckie Burnham Morgan L. Busse CSFF Blog Tour Jeff Chapman Carol Bruce Collett Karri Compton D. G. D. Davidson Theresa Dunlap April Erwin Victor Gentile Tori Greene Ryan Heart Bruce Hennigan Timothy Hicks Christopher Hopper Janeen Ippolito

Becca Johnson Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Marzabeth Katie McCurdy Shannon McDermott Rebecca LuElla Miller Joan Nienhuis Chawna Schroeder Kathleen Smith Donna Swanson Rachel Starr Thomson Robert Treskillard Steve Trower Fred Warren Phyllis Wheeler Nicole White Rachel Wyant