β Scribed by Stephen R. Lawhead
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The Celtic Crusades is a trilogy of stories about a noble Scottish family whose successive generations venture to the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades to retrieve sacred relics. In the first book, The Iron Lance , Murdo Ranulfson went to Jerusalem and brought back the iron lance used at the crucifixion. Now Duncan, Murdo's son, must find and preserve the Black Rood--a piece of the true cross. As in The Iron Lance , the main narrative is framed by the memoirs of Gordon Murray, nineteenth century scion of the ancient Scottish clan and member of a Christian secret society whose mission is to bring the world back to the true path.
This middle volume follows a format familiar to fantasy readers: an unformed youth leaves home to find himself and fulfill his destiny. In his travels through distant and dangerous lands, our hero rescues and is rescued by a series of quirky characters who join his quest, encountering divine visions, politics in the court of the Caliph, and cult assassins. He returns from his adventures older and wiser, triumphantly clutching the Black Rood, and accompanied, as an added bonus, by a new and beautiful wife.
Lawhead sprinkles his tale with delicious hints about revelations regarding the potential offspring of Jesus, which, if expanded upon in the final volume, threaten to elevate this fiction from competent to genuinely intriguing. --Luc Duplessis
The second volume of the historical fantasy Celtic Crusades trilogy finds Magnus Ranulfsson's eldest son, Duncan, taking up his father's quest for relics of the CrucifixionAin this case, the last remaining traceable piece of the True Cross, the Black Rood. He does not go alone. Padraig, an unconventional priest of the Celtic Cele De, accompanies him, and on their bandit-troubled passage through France they are joined by Prince Roupen of Armenia, who is trying to return to his homeland. When the three reach the Mediterranean, their worries multiply, as the Knights Templars are less friendly than they seem, some Christians are openly at war with one another and the Moslems (particularly the Seljuq Turks) are ready to take advantage of the intrigues. Duncan finds himself up to his sword belt in those plottings, dealing with friends where he expected enemies and vice versa The narrative is framed by the diary of a turn-of-the-century Scots physician, a member of a secret order keeping Celtic wisdom alive. Coincidences are so numerous as to be jarring, and the sheer abundance of historical detail slows the pacing. Those same details also bring the setting to robust life, however; they do no harm to the characterizations and include such treasures as the cult of the Black Mary (Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus) and a gruesomely vivid narrative of the Crucifixion. With this novel, Lawhead likely will win no converts, but nor will he alienate his faithful. (June)
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The Celtic Crusades is an epic trilogy of a Scottish noble family fighting for its existence and its faith during the age of the Crusades. The series traces five generations of knights and noblemen over a span of almost 500 hundred years, during the crucial period when military and sacred history me
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