The Broken Stone and the Secret of the Heavens' Henge
by Jonathan Morris
Handow
Jonathan Morris is a British engineer who worked on the Chek Lap Kok airport and the Tseung Kwan O MTR line. He's also an award-winning technical author, but his first foray into fiction, The Broken Stone and the Secret of the Heavens' Henge, seems a stop too far, because it fails to mind the gap between a children's book and a treatise on a pet scientific theory.
The Broken Stone is set in Neolithic times, and Morris paints a vivid, well-researched impression of family life in ancient villages. The local elders send two pre-teens, Clende and his younger sister, Marce, to attend a great tribal gathering and collect an inheritance with their old, Merlin-like teacher, Sanoc.
Morris describes their quest in a simple plot, but readers might wonder whether he is taking the trio into the mists of Neolithic Europe, or yet another Lord of the Rings-like scenario. And with characters' names such as Vivienne, Tashe, Toby, Ehrahat, Firelark and Ravenor, you might be forgiven for expecting a hobbit to spring out of the bushes at any moment.