“Okay,” she agreed, turning her eyes to the valley, lost in a blue haze of morning mist. “I don’t know about you, but my life has ceased to have linear chronology.”

This is the book I’m so proud of — the first book I borrowed electronically from the public library for my Kindle, thus dragging myself, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century. The Spirit Well by Stephen Lawhead, third in his ongoing Bright Empires series. I’ve enjoyed the previous books, and I enjoyed this one, once I’d acclimated myself to it. Which is a bit of a challenge. It’s hard enough picking up a sequel to a book you read a year ago; it’s worse when the book purposely messes with time lines and has a large (and growing) cast of characters.

The central character of the series is Kit Livingstone, who was initiated by his late uncle into the art of jumping around in space and time (and alternate universes) through the use of “ley lines” – geographical locations that focus cosmic forces (or something like that). There are also the adventures of his former girlfriend Mina, who got stranded in 16th Century Prague but did quite well for herself, thank you very much, as well as various descendants of Arthur Flinders-Petrie, an archaeologist who had a map of the ley lines tattooed onto his torso, which is now preserved in what is called the Skin Map, for which good guys and bad guys are desperately searching.

Good stuff. I’m not sure whether I recommend reading these books now, though, or waiting for all five to be published so you can read them in a string and reduce continuity difficulties. Whatever you do, read them in sequence.

I note that Lawhead includes several positive Roman Catholic characters here, so he seems to have gotten over the contemptuous anti-Catholicism that was apparent in some of his earlier books. I also noted, with surprise, some problems in word choice – at one point he uses the word “approbation” to mean the opposite of what it really means. He also has a male character speak of “humankind” rather than “mankind” in a scene in the early 20th Century. This isn’t impossible, but it seems anachronistic.

Still, good stuff, and I think Lawhead is better in this sort of genre than in epic fantasy. Recommended.

Another Virgil Flowers novel from John Sandford. The Flowers books are generally lighter than the Prey novels starring Virgil’s boss Lucas Davenport, but Storm Front actually veers off into farce territory. And it was OK. I enjoyed it generally, though it irritated me in places.

The story starts in Israel, where Rev. Elijah Jones of Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota (a real place) is involved in an archaeological dig. One morning he gets up early, breaks into a storage locker, steals a newly discovered artifact, steals a car, and sets off for home. Soon the Israelis are after him, and that’s where Virgil Flowers, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension officer in southern Minnesota, comes into it. He’s already happily occupied with investigating an improbably attractive redneck mother of five, whom he suspects of petty crime activity, when he’s ordered to pick up an Israeli Antiquities agent at the airport. Soon he can hardly turn around without bumping into Israeli agents, Hezbollah agents, Turkish agents, cable TV show stars, and ordinary reporters, all intent on getting credit for recovering a stone that—if genuine—could discredit the Old Testament and rock the faith of millions of Christians and Jews.

It’s mostly played for laughs, and nobody gets killed—which is a major change for a John Sandford book. People stumble over each other, pass each other ignorantly in the dark, and pass the stone back and forth—sometimes unwittingly—in something like a Keystone Kops scenario.

I suppose this is Sandford’s way of dealing with controversial material. Aside from the religious issues, there are Israelis and jihadis here. Sandford tries (and frankly it bugs me) to be evenhanded. The Hezbollah characters never get a chance to do their worst, and a ruthless Israeli agent is the real bad guy of the story. A couple of the Muslim characters, with terrorist associations, are seen to be essentially harmless and in love with western decadence. Which strikes me as wishful thinking, if it’s meant to be taken as typical.

But the book was amusing. Minor spoiler: Don’t worry about the threat to the Bible at the heart of the story. Mild violence, some sex, rough language. But, as mentioned, the violence level is pretty low, which may make this book more appealing to some than most of Sandford’s work.