| Date: 14 April 2011, 08:09
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The Song of Albion trilogy are some of the best books I have ever read!! They deserve 10 stars! I read fiction critically, paying attention not only to the quality of plot, but also quality of writing and, most importantly, development of characters. Stephen Lawhead's books in general, and this trilogy in particular, satisfy me in every detail. The plots are original and very well researched, and the writing is excellent, with inspiring but not over-used metaphors and subtle alliteration. The characterization is excellent! I could not believe when reading some of these reviews that the reviewer had read the same books that I did. I can truly say that I have never read books in which the characters are better developed than in these. These books deserve to be compared with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which are my all-time favorite books!
Read these books if you like, as I do: Celtic mythology; high fantasy; believable fictional characters; writing that is at once both poetic and gritty; anything written by Tolkien; well-written fantasy with Christian values...I could go on, actually--let's just say READ THESE BOOKS.
For those people who thought that the Celtic mythology setting of these books was not accurate and rather forced, I beg to disagree. Having studied Celtic mythology informally quite a lot for the past couple of years, I happen to know that these books are VERY well researched. The more that I learn about Celtic mythology, the more I am impressed by the accuracy of the Song of Albion setting. You will have learned more than you know, as you will find if these books inspire you to look further into this fascinating genre of mythology! And the Otherworld setting is, to me, very believable. I could almost believe it is real. It was a mysterious experience to visit a full-sized model of Stonehenge at sunset, during the time-between-times.
Another great thing about these books is that musicians Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning have written music to go with them. I originally heard of these books through this music. I have all the "Songs from Albion" CDs and highly recommend them, especially if you like contemporary Celtic-style music that is original composition, with a touch of New Age, rock, and medieval styles.
That is my review of the series. About this book in particular--I do not need to go over the plot since that has already been done here, and I would not want to ruin it for you anyway. This is the best of the three books, imo. It is poignantly beautiful. The ending nearly made me cry for joy! (For someone who commented that the magical events have no explanation, when did magical events ever have an explanation in fantasy? They just are.) When I finished this book I did not want to start the third one, because the ending was so wonderful I just wanted it to stay that way forever. As for everything else in the book, it is all really good too.
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