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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good read, but curiously flat in parts, 18 Nov 2004
Stephen Lawhead's take on Patrick is a bit of a curate's egg - good and bad in parts. It shares a number of themes with Lawhead's other works - like a good evocation of the celtic world; a rather mystical and almost pantheist view of religion, contrasted with the rigidity and authoriarianism of Roman Christianity; and a warts-and-all take on significant characters in history.However, there are serious flaws which mar the book for me. There is a big gap between the final section of the book and the epilogue, in which Patrick finds the conviction he has been lacking throughout the text and lights his bonfire before that of the High King - providing the catalyst for the conversion of Ireland. But the story of how he gets to that point from his return to Ireland is absent. We are left with a fulfillment of the prophecy of the druids which feels a bit too pat - Prince Hamlet suddenly metamorphoses into Dan Dare. There are other diappointments. Normally Lawhead has a real talent for evoking a sense of place, but this is almost wholly missing in the Irish sections, as previous reviewers have remarked, but also in the British sections. Patrick's homecoming journey north should be a triumphantly drawn, but it is lifeless and barely memorable.
There are also some elementary errors, like the information thast Sliamh Mis is in the North West of Ireland, when it is in the North East; this causes problems with the passages that deal with Succat's escape. However, there are parts of the book which are very good, and it still manages to draw the reader in. The Roman and Gaulish sections are particuarly lively and well-depicted. Overall the book manages to be greater than the sum of its parts, but only just. It gives the impression (as many of Lawhead's more recent books have done)of being poorly edited, and so reads like something written in haste. This is not the best of Lawhead's books, or even the best to begin with if you've never read him before. But for seasoned LAwhead fans, this is unlikely to put them off. Good, but could so easily have been much better.
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by Stephen R. Lawhead
by Stephen R. Lawhead
by Stephen R. Lawhead
by Stephen Lawhead
by Stephen Lawhead
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