The Silver Hand

Reviewed by Stephen: 9.5 out of 10.

Book two in the Song of Albion trilogy sees us continuing the epic story of Lewis (now the warrior Llew) and Simon (Siawn Hy) in their journeys in the Otherworld, Albion.The action in this second installment is like a flickering fire that Lawhead dumped a shovel-full of coal onto.

With all the hard work of explaining how the Otherworld works over and done with in the first book, Lawhead has room to simply tell the story, and tell it with such conviction and such ingenious descriptions that it becomes very, very real. One chapter into The Silver Hand and I was hooked on one of those finish-the-chapter-and-instantly-flip-the-page books that make reading exciting. The writing is clever, the plot twists are startling, the action heart-pounding.Wading through some of the reviews on Amazon and various other sites, I came across a significant amount of negative feedback for this book. One of the reasons that seems to veer the reviews toward a lower rating is the switch in narrator for The Silver Hand. The first person narration style continues through all the books in the Song of Albion, and in this second book, the narrator is switched from Llew to Tegid the Bard. I welcomed the change in narration, as three large novels told in first-person using the same character seems just a little tiresome to say the least. So, that said, it was wonderful seeing a change in perspective and the scenery described from the view of a new character.

The story itself is of a level twice what The Paradise War (Song Of Albion: Book 1) was, which doesn’t make the first novel bad by comparison, it simply makes the trilogy as a whole play out with hierarchal pacing from book to book. The characters that have been spanned over both the books have a chance for more development, and the new ones introduced fit in seamlessly with the old veterans.

One particular review I read on Amazon makes reference to a lot of parallels this book allegedly has with scripture and Christian themes in general. For me, those comparisons to Christianity seemed like a bit of a stretch, and I would actually go as far as to say this could easily pass as a secular book; the Christian parallels seemed about as palpable as they do in The Lord of the Rings. There are various themes you could quite easily take from the book as inspiration to the Christian life, but I think drawing direct and obvious parallels is a bit optimistic. Or, as Lawhead himself states:

A great many readers find messages in my books, but I believe the message you take away as a reader is one that you brought with you. Perhaps the story helped you discover the message–put you in a frame of mind to explore a subject you might not have thought about in the same way on your own, say–but you were the source all along. I say this because so many readers find so many different ‘messages’ in my stories that, if intentional, no one book could possibly contain them all and remain intelligible to anyone.

Click here to visit Stephen Lawhead’s website.

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Related Reviews

• The Endless Knot by Stephen on June 11, 2009
• The Paradise War by Stephen on April 6, 2009
• The Song of Albion Trilogy by Stephen on June 28, 2009
• Scarlet by Les on January 18, 2009
• Beyond The Summerland by Symon on February 8, 2009
• Hood by Les on January 13, 2009
• Comes A Horseman by Stephen on October 19, 2009