not as good as 1st two but still ok ( )

This whole series was quite a let down for me, however, this book was probably the most enjoyable of the three. As frustrating as it was, I enjoyed the build-up to a potential relationship between Cait and Rognvald, and I enjoyed learning about historical events in a fiction sense. ( )

Fantastic historical fiction series. You can't go wrong here. ( )

The Mystic Rose by Stephen Lawhead is the final book of his Celtic Crusades trilogy, dealing with the retrieval of three of the most holy of relics, the lance used to pierce the side of Jesus as he was on the cross, a piece of the actual cross and, in this book the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper. One relic for each generation, and in this book we follow the adventures of Cait, daughter of Duncan and granddaughter of Murdo, both of whom were featured in the other books.

This book did not stir my imagination quite the way the other two had, and I found myself reading it just to complete the trilogy. The characters were a little too lacking in depth to be believable, Cait was too forthright and modern to be a woman of the twelfth century, and the villain was to much over the top and relishing his power by acts that the church would never have condoned, particularly when it came to violence against nuns and archbishops.

I freely admit that I am not well versed in Christian theology but I found much of the mysticism mentioned in this story to be vague and clichéd. Perhaps it was simply that this trilogy was getting a little stale, but overall, I thought this was the weakest of the three books. ( )

Of course book three was about the Grail. Had to be. It's always interesting to me when a book manages to have God in it, or at least Christianity, and not piss me off. The secondary plot set in the 20th century...Totally freakin useless! Waste of time to read, doesn't further the plot and doesn't develop any.

I think I'm probably done with Lawhead. ( )