A book to totally abandon and lose yourself in, well written with a fascinating blend of historical and fantastical, this is a fitting end to ‘The Bright Empires’ series. Just to note, if you haven’t yet read any others, do go back and start at the beginning, although time travel is a regular occurrence in the books, there really is no other place to set forth than with ‘The Skin Map’. The author, like all good fantasy writers, makes the impossible feel not only possible but also substantial and authentic. There is a fairly weighty list of characters and multiple locations and times to keep track of, however as the universe stops expanding and the end of everything is screaming towards them, there is somehow a feeling of neatness and inevitability about this ending. ~ Liz Robinson
Set in 17th century and 21st century London, the Enlightenment-era court of the Hapsburgs, China during the Qing Dynasty and ancient Egypt, Bright Empires is a five-volume fantasy. In The Skin Map, Kit Livingstone and his great- grandfather, Cosimo, are brought together to find a map originally tattooed on the skin of its author, a seventeenth-century explorer who had discovered the secret of access to other worlds and parallel universes. Malign forces are also after the map and, to the surprise of all, the map proves to be not the end of the quest but its beginning. A far greater prize remains, and a much more dangerous search will need to be undertaken.
Stephen Lawhead is the internationally acclaimed author of many outstanding fantasy and science fiction novels, including The Song of Albion trilogy, and the Pendragon series. Stephen lives in Oxford with his wife Alice. They have two grown up sons.
