Ross Lawhead's "The Realms Thereunder"

Hello and welcome to the blog tour for Ross Lawhead's book "The Realm's Thereunder". Ross Lawhead is the son of well known British Speculative Fiction writer, Steven Lawhead, and let's make no mistake, he has definitely decided to follow in the footsteps of his literary father. To date, He has collaborated with his father on a trilogy of speculative fiction, written and illustrated a graphic novel, and published two volumes of “awful” poetry in a series called “The Colour Papers.” He lives in Oxford, England and "The Realms Thereunder" is his first full-length novel.

Ok, I have to be extremely honest here: I am not very familiar with many of Steven Lawhead's books, and I know that's awful since I love speculative fiction -- especially Arthurian fiction -- and time travel and British literature intrigue me. I actually have quite a few of Mr. Lawhead's books at home, but haven't gotten around to reading them yet, as sad as that is. In the past I have read Mr. Lawhead's book "The Skin Map" and reviewed it here on the P&P, and I also received a copy of the second book in that series titled "The House of Bones", which I am planning to review hopefully soon. (I was supposed to review it a while ago, but I'm still picking my way through it; I find it -- eh -- dense, as in the book is rather thick, and it's content really needs to be thought over thoroughly. Dense books always take me longer to get through. :P) I like what I've read of Mr. Lawhead's books, even if I find the works a bit "scattered". Perhaps that's just me though. It's hard to tell sometimes. *shrug*

When I saw that Mr. Lawhead's son had written and published a novel, taking after his father, I was very intrigued. I decided that I should definitely try the book out and see if I liked it, and I figured I probably would, especially after having read the blurb for the book. Here it is:



Ancient legend tells of an army of knights that will remain sleeping until the last days.

The knights are waking up.

A homeless man is stalked by a pale, wraithlike creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. Maimed animals and a host of suicides cluster around a mountain in Scotland. And deep beneath the cobbled streets of Oxford, a malicious hoard besieges a hidden city.

Freya Reynolds is a university student with a touch of OCD and an obsession with myth and folklore. Daniel Tully is living rough on the streets of Oxford, waging a secret war against an enemy only he can identify. Years ago, they found themselves in a world few know is real. They have since gone their separate ways and tried to put that adventure behind them.

But the mythical world is now bleeding into our reality-a dark spiritual evil that is manifesting itself in forgotten corners of the British Isles. Alex Simpson is a Scottish police officer who specializes in hunting mythical creatures. Together, they must confront the past, the present, and points beyond to defeat the ultimate threat to humanity.

Nothing they've seen so far prepares them for what awaits . . . in The Realms Thereunder.

Now come on, you have to admit that this sounds like a cool story, am I right? ^_^ So I was very happy when I had the chance to get the book from the CSFF blog tour and read through it. Currently I'm almost 80% through the book, and still reading. This review is on what I have read of the book so far and what I think of it to date. It may be that I have to update this review after I get the book completely finished, but we'll just have to see. :)

My thoughts:

Ross Lawhead definitely takes after his father, no question. He is a good writer, and his prose are well placed, and engaging. He certainly has many good ideas and knows how to put interesting details into his stories that help flesh out characters, places and scenes. And I do like his style of writing... it has a definite "British" air about it, and I often find myself reading it aloud with an accent. *smirk*

However (and I think this is unfortunate), I find this work to be as scattered as I find his father's works to be, to date.

I don't say that to seem mean or rude, and like I said, it could just be me. I'm not sure. But let me try to explain what I mean. Up to this point in the story, the book has worked to juggle four different story lines: one for Daniel at this point in time, one for Freya at this point in time, one for Alex at this point in time, and one for Fraya and Daniel when they were children. Each story line is different -- unique to say the very least -- and thoroughly engaging. HOWEVER, at this moment I find it difficult to see how the four different story lines relate to each other. At 80% through the book, I have yet to see the story lines mesh so that the characters can meet and work together to defeat this ancient evil that threatens the world, as is stated will happen in the second to last paragraph of the blurb. Right now, Daniel is currently in another world altogether; Freya is completely spacing out, and coming to every few years or so (maybe... it's difficult to tell what's going on there); Alex was almost killed by a dragon in the modern world; and back in time, Freya and Daniel are searching for an evil heart of some sort.

Now, the author has 20% of the book left to convince me that these storylines will all eventually work together and the story will align. I'm definitely going to keep reading. But at this moment this doesn't feel like one good story; it feels like four good stories, that may have similarities involved, but that really don't have much in common. I'll just have to wait and see what happens closer to the end of the book -- reserve my final judgment until I get the whole picture. Perhaps I will end up changing my thoughts and will have to come back and change my opinions in this review. I don't know.

On another note, I have two copies of this book in reality - a paperback copy that was given to me for the blog tour, and then after I bought my new kindle I went ahead and got an e-book version as well. I've been switching on and off between the two versions of the book, and while I have so far had no real troubles with the physical copy, I've found several formatting issues with the digital copy. These aren't grammatical errors that I'm talking about; these are more like cut offs in the middle of a sentence while the rest of the sentence starts a new paragraph, or paragraphs doing much the same thing. It's rather annoying. :P And to be quite honest, for a book that came out through Thomas Nelson, I expected a better job. I don't know if others have noticed the same problems or not, but it's definitely something that troubles me. I wish it were different.

I honestly must say that I HATE to give negative reviews of any sort. And I especially hate to give negative reviews to good writers, because the truth of the matter is that Ross Lawhead is ABSOLUTELY a good writer. I've kept reading, after all, and I'm going to continue reading to the end. Truth to tell, it's a catchy story, even if it makes no sense to me at the moment. But that's just it: it makes no sense to me at the moment. I may keep reading, and I may even like what I'm reading (which I do), but I can't pretend I know what's going on, even so far into the book. It's confusing right now, scattered all over the place, and the plot lines just don't match up. Hopefully things will improve by the time I reach the end.

Don't let my review deter you from checking out this book for yourself though. For more reviews on this book and other Christian Speculative titles, please visit a few of the links below. I'm sure that others' opinions will differ. :)


Also, you can find more about Ross and his book at: http://www.rosslawhead.com/blog/


and:


http://www.amazon.com/Realms-Thereunder-Ancient-Earth/dp/1595549099/

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