Catch Hold Of The Fatal Tree (Bright Empires, #5) Written By Stephen R. Lawhead In Print

fifth and final volume of the Bright Empires series is much of a piece with the four volumes that went before, in terms of content, style, and quality.
Reader's reactions to the first four would probably be predictive of their reaction to this one, And the first four should definitely be read, in order, before tackling this one! As readers of the Shadow Lamp already know, and as the cover copy which also serves as the Goodreads description states, our major characters are now caught up in the climactic effort to respond to, and hopefully prevent, the End of Everything: a reversal of the universe/multiverse's expansion in a rapid contraction that will annihilate everything that exists.


Both the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of the series continue to be in evidence, For perhaps the first twothirds of the book, the plot actually seemed to me to be somewhat more aimless than in the preceding books, with our "questors" seeming to act in a relatively random fashion in the face of the emergency.
On the plus side, Lawhead delivers a couple of surprises in his plotting that I did not see coming but character development continues to be believable.
Multiple plot strands are juggled probably about as well as they can be, with so many, And the author creates an impressive vision of the cosmic scope of a meaningful multiverse, suffused with an explicitly theistic perspective and expressed in majestic and beautiful prose, which didn't fail to impress this reader.
We even have some clean romance, presented tastefully and intelligently, as is Lawhead's wont,

A major point that for me cost this volume, and the series in general, is the heavy reliance on quantum physics, which I don't fully understand and am not unreservedly convinced is valid anyway, and which tends to be only vaguely explained here.
Also, the internal logic of the premise seems weak to me, It isn't a spoiler since the preceding books state it to mention that the contraction of spacetime is happening because Arthur FlindersPetrie misused the Spirit Well to restore the dead Xian Li to life.
But that raises other questions that don't get answers, How does the Spirit Well do this in the first place What is its relation to the multiverse If it can be misused in this fashion and can thus threaten the End of Everything, why wouldn't the Creator whom Lawhead posits take measures to prevent this in the first place Why would one action that wasn't "meant to be" cause the contraction of the universe How do we know what's "meant to be," in this sense Why does the contraction wait three generations to start happening Inquiring minds want to know!

Related to this, the logic behind the ending is unsatisfactory, IMO.
If our questors travel back in time to stop an action in the past, wouldn't that change the entire fabric of subsequent spacetime, and undo everything that subsequently happened as a result Wouldn't the contraction never have begun happening, rather than suddenly being reversed Wouldn't Xian Li's child and later descendants then never have existed What guarantee would Burleigh have that stepping into the Spirit Well would allow him to change the past the way he wanted And if his doing so would have made the contraction worse, why does Kit and Co.
changing the past the way they want to make the contraction stop instead Arguably, this whole scenario is not really well thought out, and just operates the way that Lawhead wants it to independently of internal logic.


In summation, I liked the series moderately well, and liked several of the characters, But generally speaking, I don't regard it as Lawhead's best work, Personally, I'd recommend the King Raven trilogy as a better introduction to his corpus, I have a new top favorite series, In other news: a reread of all five books is called for ASAP!

P, S. Please go grab BookTHE SKIN MAP at your local library, bookstore, or online someplace, Because these books are epic on so many levels, It's difficult for me to close the final book on a very good series, I became very attached to these characters and will be thinking of them for quite some time to come.
This final book was even better than the rest and gave me a great sense of satisfaction at the end.
A couple of things confused me, and I know that I will return to this series again one day.
These books are too good to let sit on the shelf forever and not open them again!

These books convey, very strongly, that there are consequences to everything we do, and that is even more true of any form of "time travel".
Lives can be forever altered if we're not careful with our words and our deeds, and most just cannot be taken back.


As this book also illustrates very well, everyone makes mistakes, Everyone does the wrong thing from time to time, That is how we learn what is good and what isn't, . . at least for us, or for those we love, There are many lessons to be learned within the pages of these books and I won't forget them.
Many are things I have seen and experienced for myself during my life,

I will be reading more of his books, I just love his writing style too much! Yes, the book was good to close the story, but looking back over the series I don't think that it was up there with his best.
Initial Response
HOW DO I FIND WORDS HELP,

High Lights
THE WHOLE THING,
Okay, more specifically, THE CHARACTERS! Kit is still great, Mina is still plain AWESOME, and Cass is so sweet!
I really enjoyed Tony's character, though, every time I pictured him, all that came to mind was Tony STARK.
XD It was amusing, to say the least,
The description and imagery, as always, TRANSPORTS me into the story, I feel like I'm watching a movie, it's so vivid and REAL!
The stakes just about killed me.
I'm like still kinda mad at Arthur for what he did.
. . Like, REALLY! You're going to destroy the whole universe to save your wife! I mean, like, that's totally sweet and romantic in a way, but c'mon.

Burleigh. Hmm. I don't know how I feel about him.
. . Like, I feel like I was duped, thinking that he wanted to change, And then the whole thing at the Fatal Tree happened, and I felt TOTALLY BETRAYED, ahem But then I afterwards, I STILL felt bad for him! It's so confusing, . . I can't put it into words, Halp.
Etzel is just so sweet and I feel like everyone should strive to be like him.
Really.
Yeah, everything.

Low Lights
Okay, so maybe I have ONE teensyweensy complaint, The ending it just didn't quite satisfy me, I mean, the crisis is averted, the universe is no longer in danger, everyone's safe, but.
. . What about Kit and Cass Why don't we get to see them And Mina and Etzel What about Tony reuniting with his daughter Or what about GIVING SOME CLOSURE FOR THE PEOPLE AT JVCLA Like, to me, they're still in a panic.
Big time. I just wish there would've been a little more closure, is all,

Conclusion
I'd just love to thank Deborah for introducing this series to me!! I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! If you're looking for a wild, multiverse, slightly timetravelish, historical fictionish, fantasyish epic series, look no more.
THIS IS IT! :D
/, Really like this writer especially his intepretation of Robin Hood and I like this series as well really weird use of "leylines" to build the world.
But for whatever reason, I just wasn't as excited by this one, Seemed like a way to get the characters from the last novel to the next, Culmination! In this final installment of the Bright Empires series, I especially appreciated Lawhead's references and parallels to famous moments and teachings in the Bible.
While this series isn't overtly Christian, the underpinnings of truth ring through the finale, A satisfying conclusion to a complex tale, I look forward to reading more of Lawhead's work, The Fatal Tree is the final book in the Bright Empires Series that spansbooks, I cannot remember how I first heard of these books but I am glad I found them, I am hooked on anything that has to do with time or interdimensional travel, It is a continuous story/journey through thebooks that keeps revisiting the plight of the various characters that you have come to know and love.
This final book brings everything to a close and luckily it was a happy close as the universe was preparing to collapse and take the whole world with it.



The Fatal Tree is an amazing ending to the journey that Kit and Mina have been on.
Wouldn't it be exciting to be able to travel that way, Well like most Lawhead series, this was a fun romp, I loved the characters. The story was well plotted, well researched, and well written, And I recommend any Lawhead fan to read this series,

However, this is not my favorite of Lawheads work, Theres a little more X position in this series than what I think is necessary, It seems to have elongated it somehow, Also, while I understand that Thomas Nelson is a Christian publishing house, and I also am of the Christian faith I did feel that there was a little bit too much of a stretch with religious themes/symbolism.
I have no problem with this, However it seemed a bit of a reach at times, I appreciate the way that Lawhead makes his religious themes much more subversive and subtle in his other works in my opinion that makes it even more powerful.


There are some plot holes related to some of the quantum physics stuff, The ending leaves more unaccounted for than I would have liked but thats the choice of the storyteller and I respect that.


If youre a Lawhead fan read all five of these books, Theyre a lot of fun, If youve never read any of Lawheads work before, I recommend starting somewhere else, My favorite by him is Byzantium, I highly recommend this as a Lawhead primer,

Hes a great writer, All in all this was an entertaining story about people I cared about, This is an overall review of the "Bright Empires" omnibus series by Stephen R Lawhead, I dug the premise, the idea of parallel worlds is one I've always liked, and I prefer Everett's MWI over the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics at least, from a layperson's POV, I don't know the math and the heavily technical aspects of the theories.
And the idea of using supposed ley lines to travel to alternate worlds and times within those worlds was pretty cool.


But that's about where the Good in this series ended, The rest was horrendous. The characters did do some development, but it was bland and boring for the most part, and predictable and convenient for the rest.
Motivations for the protagonists and villain alike were vague and squishy, never really making much real sense of WHY anyone was doing what they were doing and nobody was ever really sure exactly WHAT it was they WERE doing

to begin with, besides trying to go someplace but then what.


Now, I don't mind religion being an aspect of the stories I read, I just prefer fictional religions.
Not a fan of real world religion being a part of the story, unless it is set in an ancient setting this was, at times, but also in the modern period, both early and late modern periods.
The preachiness got a bit annoying rather quickly, And I don't even mind a redemption story, and though this one was attempted fairly well, I can only give it a B for success on that aspect.


Lawhead has a decent reputation as a good writer, and I've even read one other book of his that was pretty damned good.
So I don't know what happened here, Perhaps this was just his bad series, and it had to be gotten out of the way,

Whatever you do, DO NOT LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK OF THIS, The narrator's American accent is frakking painful to listen to, and he does a bunch of them throughout the series, especially towards the end.
As an American, it hurt to hear, Normally, Brits doing American accents do not bother me, bit this was atrocious, and must not be heard by living ears ever again!.