I really need to get out of this habit of posting at the last minute on the last day of the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. Because this is an awesome event, and it always deserves more time on my blog, but life seems to like to throw me for a loop these days. 

And next year, if I sign up for a blog tour during National Novel Writing Month, someone smack me, okay? I have bitten off way more than I can chew for this month.

However, The Shadow Lamp has been a welcome ahem form of procrastination from working on my own novel.

The quest for answers – and ultimate survival – hinges on finding the cosmic link between the Skin Map, the Shadow Lamp, and the Spirit Well.

The search for the map of blue symbols began in a rainy alley in London, but has since expanded through space and time and includes more seekers.

Kit, Mina, Gianni, Cass, Haven, and Giles have gathered in Mina’s 16th-century coffee house and are united in their determination to find a path back to the Spirit Well. Yet, with their shadow lamps destroyed and key pieces of the map still missing, the journey will be far more difficult than they imagine. And when one of their own disappears with Sir Henry’s cryptic Green Book, they no longer know who to trust.

At the same time, the Zetetic Society has uncovered a terrifying secret which, if proven, will rock the very foundations of Creation. The quest for answers is no longer limited to recovering an unknown treasure. The fate of the universe depends on unraveling the riddle of the Skin Map.

I first discovered the Bright Empires series on the shelf at my local library, before I found the CSFF Blog Tour. Come to think of it, that was at least three years ago, and I think it was likely the summer before I started really blogging as a writer.

The Skin Map had just been released, and I was just beginning to figure out that I evidently have a taste for anything morbid sounding, and the title caught my eye.

I’d also read – and loved – several of Lawhead’s series already, and I’d attempted my own (terrible mess) of a novel (still in desperate need of revision and I haven’t had the courage to look at it again) about time travel and parallel dimensions, and so the topic piqued my interest, as well.

I’ll be honest – I can’t recall if I was impressed with the first book a whole lot, and I remember being confused several times, but having the distinct impression that if I could just stick through the series, everything would fall into place eventually.

The pay-off is starting to arrive. While at the same time the true stakes are finally being revealed. (Also, another moment of honesty – I still have 100 pages left to read in The Shadow Lamp, so if any of my speculations here are spot-on or miles off target, just smile and nod. Thank you!)

So the question is – what does happen to the ley lines if the universe has stopped expanding? Is the universe truly shrinking, like Todd Clarke and Brendan Hanno have speculated, and will characters find that ley lines disappear when they need them most? Are people going to get stranded in times where they don’t belong?

There’s one more book left, though. Just one. We will finally (hopefully!) get the answers to all (most?) of our questions, and see everyone safely home, whenever home may be for them.

You can find Stephen Lawhead on his website, and on Facebook.

And, as always, the other tour participants (and I will be making my rounds… as soon as I write 774 more words for NaNoWriMo):

Julie Bihn
Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
Karri Compton
Theresa Dunlap
April Erwin
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Becky Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirriam Neal
Writer Rani
Nathan Reimer
Chawna Schroeder
Jojo Sutis
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Rachel Wyant
Phyllis Wheeler
Deborah Wilson