“Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly”

I’ve just finished reading Empire of Bones by N D Wilson, the third and probably the best yet in the Ashtown Burials series. The series is a children’s contemporary fantasy of high adventure and drama, drawing on myth and history in a contemporary America, with echoes of Indiana Jones, Harry Potter and C S Lewis.

The quote above captures the dual sense of danger and heroism that runs through the book. Wilson writes from a robustly Christian worldview without being the slightest bit clunky or didactic. He can really turn a phrase and keep you turning the pages.

I had the pleasure of meeting Nate Wilson at the premiere of his short film The Hound of Heaven at the Raindance film festival last autumn, and got my copy of The Dragon’s Tooth, the first in the series, signed, along with his non-fiction book Death by Living, a powerful meditation on living and dying well. He’s also working on the script of a film adaptation of C S Lewis’s The Great Divorce, which I’m eager to see!