The Iron Lance (The Celtic Crusades #1)
Most of Stephen Lawhead's popular historical fantasies are part of one  or another of his sagas, trilogies, or cycles. For readers who enjoy big  galloping yarns set in distant lands, and don't mind having their hands held by  the author every step of the way, the first volume of his new Christian trilogy  should hit the spot.The framing device begins at the end of the nineteenth century, in Edinburgh,  where Gordon Murray is about to be inducted into an ancient brotherhood whose  secret rites involve a sacred relic: the iron lance of the title. The main  narrative is set in eleventh century Orkney. When Pope Urban II calls for the  retaking of Jerusalem from the infidel, the local lord, Ranulf, joins the  Crusade with his elder sons, leaving behind young Murdo to oversee the family  holdings. When the Church, through a nefarious scheme, confiscates the house and  holdings, Murdo has no choice but to follow the Crusaders to the Holy Land and  bring his father home to fix the whole mess.Lawhead paints a vast and exotic canvas of medieval world politics, then peoples  it with colorful characters--cunning Byzantine rulers, bluff Norman knights,  gap-toothed, shaggy-brained Saxon peasants--who encounter visions and miracles,  brutality and ambition, love and justice. At the end of the main narrative,  Murdo gets what he wants but not in the ways expected. The framing narrative  ends with hints that, as the world lurches towards a new millennium, Gordon  Murray's Christian secret society is the world's only hope for survival, and the  time nears for the brotherhood to reveal itself.--Luc Duplessis--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.