Kit stared at this fellow questors. "Is this it: the End of Everything?"
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. It starts with small,
seemingly insignificant wrinkles in time. Then a busy bridge suddenly
disappears, spilling cars into the sea. A beast from another realm roams
modern streets. Napoleon's army appears in 1930s Damascus ready for
battle. The questors of the Zetetic Society are spread across the
universe. At the command centre of the Jansky Very Large Array Radio
Telescope astronomers think that parts of the universe have stopped
expanding: and begun to contract. Mina is stuck on a plain of solid ice,
only an angry cave lion for company. And evil Lord Burleigh is locked in
a dungeon, his survival dependent on the kindness of the very man he
tried to kill. Kit and Cass are back in the Stone Age trying to reach
the Spirit Well. But a huge yew tree now covers the portal, cutting off
their path. Unless they can find a way through, Kit's fears for the end
of the future will be fulfilled. In this final volume of the fantastic
Bright Empires series, Stephen R. Lawhead brings his multi-layered tale
to a stunning and satisfying conclusion. STEPHEN R. LAWHEAD is the
bestselling author of The Pendragon Cycle and The Song of Albion
trilogy. He lives in Oxford, UK.
