In this second book in his Bright Empires Series, The Bone House (sequel to The Skin Map), Stephen Lawhead continues the saga of Kit Livingstone and his friends and enemies, in various places in space, time, and alternate dimensions.
Time travel stories, though not uncommon, are devilish hard to put together (as I can testify, though I make no claim to have done it as well as Lawhead). The story jumps around a number of locations and millennia, and we’re informed that some of the futures and pasts are alternate ones. It’s all rather complicated, and the large cast makes it hard to keep the characters, many of whom only appear briefly, straight. I recommend that you bookmark the Important People section, for reference.
In The Skin Map, Kit Livingstone met his great-grandfather, Cosimo, who taught him to use the mysterious “ley lines” to move around dimensional pathways. Cosimo is in competition with Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland, a villain and megalomaniac, in seeking the Skin Map, which the original discoverer of the ley lines, Sir Arthur Flinders-Petrie, had tattooed on his own body (so that he’d never lose it). The fact that Arthur himself is a character in the story, while his tanned skin is the “Maguffin” of the whole adventure, adds a bizarre note.
It’s all rather fun, and of great interest, if you can keep the players straight. Again in this volume, one of the most interesting characters is Kit’s old girlfriend Mina, who accidentally got stuck in 16th Century Prague, an experience which surprisingly turned her into a better and more competent person, one who’s very useful to have around.
To my surprise the most moving part of the story was a sojourn by Kit in a prehistoric cave community, where he has a genuinely transcendent spiritual experience that raises the whole level of the story.
I recommend The Bone House almost without reservation, except to say that the reader may want to wait until the whole series is available in the format he prefers, and read the whole thing at once, to help keep track of all the characters and settings.
