Stephen R. Lawhead - The Paradise War

So this morning I couldn't sleep after Janelle left, so I finished reading The Paradise War, book one of the Song of Albion trilogy.

Stephen R. Lawhead is a phenomenal writer. His command of the english language is impressive, even intimidating. His prose is pretty near flawless. His writing flows poetically so that its delightful to read.

What's even more astounding than his writing ability, though, is the fact that his publishers let this book be printed the way it is! It's like an unfleshed outline for a fascinating fantasy adventure.

Okay, here's a quick summary of the plot and then I'll go into what I hate about the book. Lewis and Simon are roommates at Oxford University, they're both in post graduate studies. Simon gets it into his head to go to the Otherworld, and drags Lewis along with him. Lewis fails to get through the portal, however, and returns to Oxford alone. At Oxford, weird stuff starts happening and it becomes apparent that the Otherworld is unraveling, so, with the help of Professor Nettleton, Lewis goes through the portal and enters the Otherworld to find Simon.

He finds himself in Albion, and with Simon's help, is mistaken for a warrior. The Great King, Meldryn Mawr sends Lewis to the warrior school at Ynys Sci, where he spends seven years. After his seven years are over, Lewis is a well trained warrior, and just in time too. He returns to the Kingdom of Prydain--King Meldryn Mawr's dominion--to find it ravaged by the Lord of the Dead and his demon army. He joins the great King and the few survivors of Prydain on a long trek to the King's last surviving fortress. They are pursued by the demon army, but they get to the fortress at the last minute, only to be besieged by an army they cannot defeat.

It's up to Lewis to find the Song of Albion and release it, so that it binds the Lord of the Dead to his own domain.

Okay, that's a pretty brief summary, there's quite a lot more to the story than that, but you'll have to read it yourself if you want to find out about it.

My problem with the story is this: it's shallow. The plot is thin. The characters are fluid and two dimensional at best. It's almost like Lawhead doesn't really even know his characters, they're just there to roll the plot along.

At Ynys Sci, three female characters are introduced, the three daughters of Scatha, the school's governor. Lewis falls in love with all three of them, apparently, and there's some kind of weird platonic sexual something going on between the four of them because they all kiss, hold hands, and cuddle with Lewis but they act like its normal, no one talks about it, and the sisters don't get jealous of each other. Lewis seems to prefer one of them, but that doesn't stop him from kissing, holding hands, and cuddling with the other two. It's just weird. And the sisters seem interchangeable, they have no definite individual characters, they always appear together or near each other and one is just as good as another. Then, one of them gives Lewis a prophecy, and they're almost never mentioned again in the story.

Almost all the characters are like this, two dimensional and interchangeable, only there to move the plot along. I'm thinking the first person narration is partly to blame because Lewis narrates like he's writing a newspaper article that lapses into poetry and excessive description.

Suffice to say, I wasn't too thrilled with this story. I didn't enjoy reading it.

Here's the thing, though, I know Lawhead can write a good story because I've read his King Raven Trilogy and loved it! And I read The Warlords of Nin and it was pretty good too, so maybe this book was just hastily written? I'm not sure what the problem is, it's just a really crappy story.