The Fatal Tree

Bright Empires, Book 5

By: Stephen R. Lawhead

Narrated by: Simon Bubb

Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Kit stared at his fellow questors. “Is this it… the End of Everything?” It started with small, seemingly insignificant wrinkles in time: 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. But that’s only the beginning as entire realities collide and collapse. The questors are spread throughout the universe. Mina is stuck on a plain of solid ice, her only companion an angry cave lion. Tony and Gianni are monitoring the cataclysmic reversal of the cosmic expansion - but coming up short on answers. And Burleigh is languishing in a dreary underground dungeon - his only hope of survival the very man he tried to murder. Kit and Cass are back in the Stone Age trying to reach the Spirit Well. But an enormous yew tree has grown over the portal, effectively cutting off any chance of return. Unless someone can find a solution - and fast - all Creation will be destroyed in the universal apocalypse known as The End of Everything. In this final volume of the fantastic Bright Empires series, Stephen R. Lawhead brings this multi-stranded tale to a stunning and immensely satisfying conclusion.

©2014 Thomas Nelson Publishers (P)2014 Thomas Nelson Publishers

outstanding resolution to a mondboggling race

although I loved the performance the production was sub par other than that. an outstanding piece of literature. for those who enjoy thrill of a chase, mystery, crime, time and space travel its a hit. start with the skin map and trust ne when I say this is one of those series that keeps getting better!

Excellent as always

Stephen Lawhead has delivered on every book of his I have read... And I have read them all.

Been a fan of Lawhead for 25 years!

What made the experience of listening to The Fatal Tree the most enjoyable?

I thoroughly enjoyed this series. It explores ley lines, time travel, apocalyptic possibilities, archeology, science and more, but not in what I would consider a "cheesy" way. Lawhead has pulled his material from many current conversations that can be found on the Internet in alternative news sources about all of these subjects, and then some. Through his fictional story, he explores what life might be like if "all that" were true. I found the character development, the plot development, the historical aspects of the various settings for the story, etc. to all be very engaging.

Interesting concept,

I really enjoyed this book, The reader is excellent at giving each character a different feel and even a different accent.

Conclusion is somewhat of a letdown

This is the conclusion to Stephen Lawhead’s Bright Empires series. A quick background to this series. It is five books, but they should be seen as one long story that is divided into five equal chunks. The books are definitely not stand alone reads. And given the complexity of the overall story and meandering threads, it is best to read all five books at the same time. Also, be aware that Lawhead’s writing style seems to me to have somewhat YA, though i don’t know if he intends it that way. So the villains seem a bit innocent and naive and if you’d give the story a rating, it would definitely be a G. As to the overall series (this fifth book included), I found it to be way too long and weighted down with excess characters and plot lines for what the story is. I think the whole story (55 hours across 5 books) would be much tighter and better if it was a third the length. As to this book, I found it to be a let down after the build up of the first four books. I thought that the conclusion seemed like Lawhead was writing an epic story and then he ran out of creative inspiration and just ended the story. It left me wondering what the point was. I am a fan of Lawhead, and I think that maybe he was aiming for something like a non-Celtic “Song of Albion” conclusion but that it didn’t really work. I did enjoy his characters though, so even if the plot was a disappointment, the characters weren’t. Finally, while I did like the idea of a villain being redeemed, I do think this was also done overly simply. It made me think of another Lawhead book, Byzantium, where the lead character had a somewhat simplistic crisis of faith. Maybe these are both due to Lawhead’s YA writing style mentioned above. Stephen Lawhead is a great storyteller and I think he has some great ideas. If you are a Lawhead fan, do read this, enjoy the characters but be prepared to be a bit letdown by the conclusion. If you are new to Lawhead, I’d recommend starting with a different series.

powerful

This is a powerful conclusion to a beautiful story. I appreciate Lawhead's portrayal of grace in the face of great difficulty. I also appreciated the theme of God's providence. God is good and does work all things out for the good!

nice story, too many words

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The story moved very slowly. There was too much repetition and the dialogue was sometimes irritatingly redundant. I liked the overall story line and ideas--it just needed more editing. It seemed to be more an issue in the later books in the series. I didn't notice it so much in the first couple.

Could you see The Fatal Tree being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

It could be quite amazing visually. The story line is very sound, and a critical rewrite might be just what it needs.

could have been good.

Disappointing end to this series. It got worse with each book. the religious overtones were just too much. I can handle some subtle religious content, but it was way overdone and cheesy.

So much potential, so little delivery

On it's surface, this storyline and series should have been a stellar hit. Stephen Lawhead has written some fantastic stories that I've throughly enjoyed, including his "Song of Albion" series, "the Pendragon Cycle", and the "Dragon King" trilogy. All were excellent.

And this book has some fantastic science fiction ideas and some very creative ways of bringing all these concepts into a cohesive and compelling storyline: multiverse and alternate dimensions, dark matter, universal expansion, quantum mechanics, lines of power (leylines), ancient civilizations and time travel. This really should have been an exciting story given all of these interesting components.

However, the story just seemed to drag on. The author created characters that I was only mildly interested in, that seemed boorish and immature. The plot of this series meandered wildly. Since the story was telling a multi-dimensional and multi time-period narrative, some of that is to be expected. But most of the time you did not have a very clear indication at all of what was really trying to be accomplished by whom and why. A tattooed man who passed away a long time ago holds the secret to... something. We don't know what for a long time, by we are going to get 5 books to try and figure it out.

Characters are introduced at random almost, they disappear and then re-appear at random (though it gets all tied together later I suppose). One character's storyline goes on for 4 books only to have him die at the beginning of the 5th book in a very disconnected and odd way, having accomplished nothing and pretty much resulting in a compete waste of time knowing his story at all. Indeed, the author goes on to explain that he really shouldn't have existed except by another character's mistake.

Also, the book has an almost "G" level rating in terms of action and drama. It's very "British" in it's prudence and the characters sense of propriety, and the "danger" posed to the protagonists feel veiled and benign. Occasionally, one stumbles through a leyline into a tricky situation, but very rarely do you get a sense of danger. And when someone is killed, it is always more by circumstance and carelessness that an act of aggression against them. (I am still confounded why the author chose to kill off one of the characters in particular at "the fatal tree"- perhaps to give the book it's name?)

Fantastically creative concepts for the book, but the actual story told was VERY sub-par and boring. I nearly dropped the series after the 3rd book, but after some encouragement from a friend, picked it back up again for book 4 (which got my hopes up for the story actually becoming interesting) only to completely dash it to smithereens in this final book. There are MUCH more interesting works of Lawhead to explore.

Pass on this one unless you're already 4 books into the series- juts don't expect a good finish.

The fatal tree had me hooked

The Fatal Tree has me hooked. I have truly enjoyed Stephen R Lawheads books and finished this series in the road today. I will be looking for more like this as the adventures continue as the miles pass by.