I did not value this series properly when I read it the first time. I wasn’t mature enough to fully understand the first book when I read it originally. But it was entertaining enough, so I bought the second book. By that time, my mind started making the connections with mythology, and then at the very end of the third book, the powerful but subtle allegory hit me like a bullet train.
I’m going to warn you right now that this is a book with more content than anything I’ve recommended before. But good and bad are juxtaposed in this book in such an incredible way. It’s somewhat, to my mind, like how Crime and Punishment highlights the need for a Christian morality by showing what an egoistic man trying to ignore morality can do. The heroes face some alarming evils in here. But it makes the triumph of good all the brighter.
The prose was old-fashioned and beautiful. I love a good buddy story and thought Llew and Tegid were great characters. One doesn’t see strong friendships much in books these days, and especially if it’s between guys, the woke world will immediately start conjecturing that they’re gay. Which is disgusting, and untrue. But I appreciate friendships as they’re something I can relate to. I can’t relate to Llew’s romantic relationship, but friendship? Absolutely. The theme is also definitely something any Christian can get behind — that longing for an unbroken world, a deeper satisfaction, something to live for beyond ourselves. Plus, I enjoy Celtic mythology (when it’s clean) and so liked getting to nerd out a little bit when I caught a reference.
There is so much food for thought in here on the true nature of kingship, authority, masculinity, sacrifice, and heroism. Archetypes and deep spiritual themes are woven throughout, and truths about Christianity are boldly highlighted by the contrast of pagan beliefs from the lost people of Albion, searching and close hits to the truth from those in Albion faithful to the idea of one Good God and one great Evil, and materialist greed and destruction after the way of N.I.C.E. by Simon and his followers.
Experience the dazzling brilliance of a world like ours—yet infinitely bolder and brighter: a place of kings and warriors, bards and battles, feats of glory and honour. It is a place you will forever wish to be. It is Albion.
“When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the world I knew.”
Lewis Gillies is an American graduate student in Oxford who should be getting on with his life. Yet for some reason, he finds himself speeding north with his roommate Simon on a lark—half-heartedly searching for a long-extinct creature allegedly spotted in a misty glen in Scotland. Expecting little more than a weekend diversion, Lewis accidently crosses through a mystical gateway where two worlds meet: into the time-between-times, as the ancient Celts called it. And into the heart of a collision between good and evil that’s been raging since long before Lewis was born.
First published more than twenty years ago, The Song of Albion Trilogy has become a modern classic that continues to attract passionate new readers.
Amazon Blurb
As for content warnings, I’d say this book is definitely 16+. Just for deeper themes and a fair amount of battle violence. The monsters in the first book are also described in rather grotesque detail. Rape is mentioned, though never described. There are lots of fights, and the villain tortures the two heroes by cutting off the hand of one and blinding the other. Heads are chopped off and used as trophies. A girl is thrown off of sea cliffs to kill her. There’s various stabbing, swordfighting, hand-to-hand, and all that. Also, like Pict warriors, the soldiers sometimes fight naked, though of course that is only stated and not described in any sort of gratuitous detail. As well, in the final book, topless girls perform a Celtic sword dance, but again the descriptions aren’t over-the-top.
Evil in this series is always portrayed as very dark, be that through descriptions of the poison that seeps through Albion and causes men’s flesh to rot off their bodies on contact, or through the cruelty of the villains when they have captured heroes. It’s not unwarranted, but it is very serious and mature, and described vividly and with a poetic, evocative style that reminds me of LOTR.
Violence doesn’t bother me all that much, so that’s just a warning to those who are more sensitive out there that I’m not probably qualified to make judgments on who it would and wouldn’t disturb. I’d say it’s about on par with Wayne Thomas Batson’s The Sword in the Stars or Ted Dekker’s Circle series.
There’s also allusion to, but not description, of what Llew and his wife do on their wedding night. There’s description of her ‘delicious kisses’ and ‘warm body’ and all that vomitous poetic stuff, but it just toes the line that, say, 1984 stepped over. And frankly, that sort of physical description is all over the Christian YA fantasy and thriller market. To be honest, I kinda glaze over all that, which occurs at the beginning of the third book. I found the first and second books more interesting and exciting, because the third is basically just Llew and friends chasing his kidnapped wife across the realm and I really don’t care for most romances in books. His wife comes across as a bit of a ‘perfect woman,’ always drop-dead beautiful and physically romantic. (Which is not how women are, usually. Women are more interested in the relational and emotional first.) She doesn’t really have a personality, and this book was definitely geared towards men in its writing. Characters also lie together in a story told by Tegid the bard.
Elements of Celtic religion are also involved, such as the sacred types of trees, sacred circles, spells, and little ‘g’ gods, but the hero characters only worship and pray to the True God. I’m not sure if I would have tried to mesh those historically pagan rites with Christianity, but it’s not done in a way that would be a stumbling block. Nonetheless, I know people do have strong convictions regarding reading about such things.
There are also one or two curse words and some off-color allusions in the very beginning, and then in the third book, from Llew’s modern-day friend Simon and other villains, who are not characters to be emulated.
But, if you are alright with these content warnings, I’d argue that this trilogy is still very much worth a read. It’s one of those stories that, after you’ve read it, makes you want to go out and live your own story better. The series is also one I return to again and again to be in Albion with characters I love. It’s different from the rest of Lawhead’s stuff — more serious and philosophical than Hood, but not so adult as things like his Crusade fiction and The Pendragon Cycle. Content wise, it slides in right below The Pendragon Cycle, with the Crusade fiction on top as containing the most sex (and the most dubious moral message) of the things of his I have read.
It’s earned a place on my shelf of favorites, and hopefully, I can help you discover a new favorite too. If this sounds up your alley, check it out for sure. And if you’re not okay with that content, then I hope it helps you to avoid what you’re not comfortable with.
Until next time,
Cheers!
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