Whether a book is good or bad...

...has sometimes depended on where I am in life.

The very first Stephen R. Lawhead book I ever read was HOOD in 2007. At the time I was very big into the Irish and Celtic scene, and was subbed to a podcast that boosted indie music in that vein. I even had delusions of learning Irish or Scottish Gaelic, but those dreams fizzled out pretty hard in the face of other goings-on in my life, like deciding when to drop out of college, and failing to secure a wife.

Nevertheless, the King Raven trilogy was so good that it got me into Lawhead’s backlist. Song of Albion was equally awesome, but I didn’t go the distance with titles like PATRICK: SON OF IRELAND or his Celtic Crusades trilogy. They moved too slowly for my liking. I think that had to do with where I was, mentally and spiritually. I talked about that in my Patrick video this year.

When I went back to read PATRICK I enjoyed it a ton. Thus I’m now jumping back in on another Lawhead series that I never finished, called Bright Empires. The first book is THE SKIN MAP, which I listened to in 2010 or 2011, I can’t recall. Funnily enough after I read TUCK in 2009, I wrote Lawhead a paper letter (he always replies to those) and he told me that was his next series on deck. I still have the letter. Now, years after he’s finished it, I’m finishing it too.

The premise is that there’s an average Joe with a less-than-satisfying life in modern-day London who finds out his great-grandfather is involved in time travel. Average Joe then likewise gets embroiled in time travel, searching throughout history for a man who tattooed a time travel map onto his body. Probably the one thing I remember most from this book is that Average Joe’s grumpy girlfriend also time-travels with him, then gets accidentally dumped in Switzerland or Austria or something, and offhandedly invents the coffee industry in Europe.

You can see why I need to re-read this one.

At the time I thought the book was a little bit weird and scatterbrained. It was definitely outside of Lawhead’s established custom of Celtic/British mythology. Over a decade later, and with hundreds of non-fiction titles in my rearview, I think I have a better frame of reference that puts me in the target audience. Plus, the book is unique. I’m ready for unique.

Right now I’m debating on where I’ll post the reviews for the series. Should I do it here, or on Upstream? I could do the individual rundowns here, and then cover the entire series over there, I dunno. The sites serve different audiences (and that one is a lot larger.) Compared to his other work I think this one has broader appeal. You can let me know what you think if you

We shall see. I’m jumping in with SKIN MAP this week, among other titles. I’ll let you know how it goes.