The Silver Hand

When the king dies in Albion, a land of Celtic myth, his son doesn't automatically ascend to the throne. Instead, the bard Tegid gets to name the successor. The bard's choice of the visitor Llew angers the late king's son into a rage of vengeance in which he disfigures his two challengers and leaves them for dead. The world of Albion is confusing at first, since the story unfolds in the native Tegid's voice, but once one grows accustomed, it's engrossing. Stuart Langton reads with a poetic voice well suited to a storytelling bard. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

May 4, 1992
A troubled Celtic Otherworld with gateways into our own is the setting for the second volume in the Song of Albion series, following The Paradise War . After Meldryn Mawr, king of the Llwyddi, is treacherously slain, the bard and narrator, Tegid Tathal, names Llew, the king's champion and a sojourner from our world, as successor. The king's son Meldron contests the bard's ancient right to confer kingship and claims the throne himself. Tegid and Llew escape imprisonment only to witness the slaughter of the rest of Albion's bards; then Meldron blinds Tegid and cuts off Llew's hand, thereby denying him kingship for all time, since only an unblemished man can reign. Escaping again, Tegid and Llew wander in the wilderness, encountering a possible god, before they begin to build Dinas Dwr, a city of refuge for all those oppressed by Meldron, whose depredations are poisoning a beautiful land. Lawhead invests his often poetic vision of a Celtic land living by ancient laws with charm and dignity.