Lacedaemonian
A Plume of Smoke
Anybody on the boards a fan of this ladies work?
I could not get away with a Barbed Coil. The heroine driving a yellow Honda Civic at the begining of the novel does not do it for me. Yellow Honda Civics and fantasy do not go hand in hand. The only time I've really bought into the parallel universe (ie our reality and a fantastical world) is with the Narnia series, though I am sure nostalgia is clouding my judgement here. I also enjoyed Philip Pullman's Dark Matterials, which of course the concept of parallel universes were a integral to the story. The Dark Materials series were perhaps the strangest books I've ever read, though I think I enjoyed the two heroes more than the homage to Paradise Lost. I love Blake, Milton, Keats and the likes, but it was the excellent Lyra and Will who kept me reading with fervour.
The Book of Words series; The Baker's Boy, A Man Betrayed, Master and Fool were excellent reads with some really dark villains. In fact it was these dark villains which made this series exciting for me. In fact all the characters were multi dimensional and were not essentially good or evil. This is just a run of the mill 'small character becoming big and defeating the invincible enemy' fantasy novel but the baddies are bad in every sense of the word. The main baddie shows a paedophilia tendency in one scene. Grim but subtley done.
JV Jones' best work to date is her Sword of Shadows series. This series is another trilogy; A Cavern of Black Ice, A Fortress of Grey Ice and the not yet published Sword from Red Ice. I have been absolutely captivated by this series. It is a perfect work of heroic fantasy. The peoples, locations and characters are beautiful and the story is gripping. You really feel the melancholy of the main characters. The third book in the trilogy was due out nearly two years ago, and it was three years ago when I read A Fortress of Grey Ice. It has been an unbearable wait to see how the story will end, with frequent visits to Waterstones to find out that the book has been put back again and again. JV Jones' previously excellent web site has not had any significant updates in that period either, and she has not responded to any of my emails. Hopefully come September all will be forgiven....
I could not get away with a Barbed Coil. The heroine driving a yellow Honda Civic at the begining of the novel does not do it for me. Yellow Honda Civics and fantasy do not go hand in hand. The only time I've really bought into the parallel universe (ie our reality and a fantastical world) is with the Narnia series, though I am sure nostalgia is clouding my judgement here. I also enjoyed Philip Pullman's Dark Matterials, which of course the concept of parallel universes were a integral to the story. The Dark Materials series were perhaps the strangest books I've ever read, though I think I enjoyed the two heroes more than the homage to Paradise Lost. I love Blake, Milton, Keats and the likes, but it was the excellent Lyra and Will who kept me reading with fervour.
The Book of Words series; The Baker's Boy, A Man Betrayed, Master and Fool were excellent reads with some really dark villains. In fact it was these dark villains which made this series exciting for me. In fact all the characters were multi dimensional and were not essentially good or evil. This is just a run of the mill 'small character becoming big and defeating the invincible enemy' fantasy novel but the baddies are bad in every sense of the word. The main baddie shows a paedophilia tendency in one scene. Grim but subtley done.
JV Jones' best work to date is her Sword of Shadows series. This series is another trilogy; A Cavern of Black Ice, A Fortress of Grey Ice and the not yet published Sword from Red Ice. I have been absolutely captivated by this series. It is a perfect work of heroic fantasy. The peoples, locations and characters are beautiful and the story is gripping. You really feel the melancholy of the main characters. The third book in the trilogy was due out nearly two years ago, and it was three years ago when I read A Fortress of Grey Ice. It has been an unbearable wait to see how the story will end, with frequent visits to Waterstones to find out that the book has been put back again and again. JV Jones' previously excellent web site has not had any significant updates in that period either, and she has not responded to any of my emails. Hopefully come September all will be forgiven....
