Sword of Shadows by J V Jones Discussion

[rune]

As there was a tie for August's series discussion. Here is the other winner.

So once again, what did you think of it? Have you read all the books? Did you enjoy it? Did you hate it? What were you favourite elements of it?

 

[dwndrgn]

I read A Cavern of Black Ice. I found many of the ideas intriguing and it was well written. However, the actual story was so depressing that I barely finished it. I then picked up number 2, Fortress of Grey Ice, and didn't even finishe the third chapter. I was hoping that the story would become a little less morbidly depressing. Since it didn't, I never finished that one and have not gone back to try again or see what the third has in store.

It's a shame because I usually like her stuff. I found the Book of Words series to be very engaging and well-written.

Perhaps I shut the covers on book two too soon?

 

[Brys]

I thought the first book was one of the best starts to a dark epic fantasy series since R Scott Bakker's the Darkness that Comes Before, particularly with the whole clans ideas and Raif Severance was a great character to start off with. The Peake style part in the castle (I've forgotten its name now) was also great. Unfortunately she wasn't quite as good at doing the whole quest part, which seemed a lot more conventional - still a long way above most epic fantasy, but not as good as the earlier stuff. Then I didn't find book 2 quite as good, quite as compelling. It was still very good, but it seemed the whole part of Raif and the Maimed men didn't have the same page turning (and heartbreaking) value of his expulsion in the clans.

@dwndrgn - One of the reasons I like the series so much is exactly because it's so depressing. If it wasn't, then I think it would probably not be significantly better than your average Feist or Jordan or Eddings novel. You should try and finish it, just because it's so good. Then again, if you think it's too depressing, you may not enjoy it. But most of the best fantasy is dark and depressing, with only rare exceptions with this not being the case (Tolkien, Leiber- though even he has dark elements are relatively light in tone, while Bakker, Erikson, Harrison, Jones, Keyes, Martin, Mieville, Moorcock, Peake and Wolfe are all relatively dark in tone).

 

[dwndrgn]

I'm not squeamish, I don't have problems with dark elements, characters being flawed or dying or whatever. The problem I had with this was an all-pervading feeling of gloom and doom that never relented. I've never been a cheerful person to start with; get me reading too much of this type of thing and I'm likely to become depressed myself. This actually happened for me relatively recently while reading Roberto Canto's The Chosen. Cave of Black Ice brought me to the brink and when the second book didn't let up either - I couldn't stand it any longer. I read for the most part as an escape. If I want to make myself feel like someone who needs to be put on a suicide watch, I'll just watch the daily news...

I didn't have problems with the writing - as I said, I've enjoyed her stuff in the past and think she has a wonderful style. I just think this series was too depressing for me.

 

[a|one]

Absolutely incredible, JV Jones is by far my favorite female fantasy writer. Maybe I'm freakishly turned on by the morbid and the depressing, but this series just blew me away. I literally cannot fathom how anyone could manage to put it down. The Barbed Coil wasnt bad, and the Book of Words was very good as well, but I think the Sword of Shadows tops them all.

I think the reason dark flows so well with fantasy, is because the nature of fantasy predetermines that it does not and cannot be real, thus the more talented authors attempt to contradict that very nature by making the story as harsh and realistic as possible.

Brys I don't know how you can say Jones is the equivalent of Eddings, but then there's a lot of things I don't know.

 

[Brys]

I didn't say it was the equivalent of Eddings, I said if you took away all of the dark elements (which are all the great parts about the story, of which there are many), it wouldn't be that much better than an Eddings. I loved the book, and I said that. I thought my post had conveyed that with "I thought the first book was one of the best starts to a dark epic fantasy series since R Scott Bakker's the Darkness that Comes Before".

In your second paragraph you talk about what is often called "anti-fantasy", with authors trying to contradict the genre. IMO, this is done amazingly well by two authors: M John Harrison with Viriconium, and Roger Zelazny with the Chronicles of Amber.
While a lot of fantasy novels are dark, I don't think that something being impossible means that it has to be nice -ie look at China Mieville. There is huge amounts of dark fantasy, it's just that a stereotype of fantasy has evolved, being that of epic fantasy and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, while the history of dark fantasy goes back further than that (with the likes of Clark Ashton Smith and HP Lovecraft in the 1930s), and since then there have been a lot more - Mervyn Peake with Gormenghast (1946, 1950, 1959), Fritz Leiber's grey characters of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser about the same time, Michael Moorcock with Elric in the 1960s, Harrison with Viriconium in the 1970s, Gene Wolfe with the Book of the New Sun and Glen Cook with the Black Company in the 1980s, and since the 1990s there have been huge numbers of them, but most importantly Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (which brought these dark ideas to epic fantasy) and China Mieville's New Crobuzon books.

 

[a|one]

I didn't say it was the equivalent of Eddings, I said if you took away all of the dark elements (which are all the great parts about the story, of which there are many), it wouldn't be that much better than an Eddings. I loved the book, and I said that. I thought my post had conveyed that with "I thought the first book was one of the best starts to a dark epic fantasy series since R Scott Bakker's the Darkness that Comes Before".

I understood that... I'm just saying I don't know how you could consider eddings his equivalent in any sense, /w or w/o the dark elements. I would consider The Barbed Coil(my least favoured JV Jones novel) a better book than anything eddings has ever produced. IMO her characters are more real and less stereotypical, her stories are far more dynamic, and her innate storytelling ability far surpasses his.

I've read many of the books you listed in your second paragraph, and I never said being impossible means it has to be nice.

 

[GOLLUM]

I understood that... I'm just saying I don't know how you could consider eddings his equivalent in any sense, /w or w/o the dark elements. I would consider The Barbed Coil(my least favoured JV Jones novel) a better book than anything eddings has ever produced. IMO her characters are more real and less stereotypical, her stories are far more dynamic, and her innate storytelling ability far surpasses his.

I've read many of the books you listed in your second paragraph, and I never said being impossible means it has to be nice.

I'm with Alone on this one Brys. Jones Vs. Eddings? I don't care if you Stew it, Mash it, Boil it, Steam it, Fry it OR Roast it, as a contest it's a a no-brainer!....

Interesting Alone, I'm slightly different in my order of Jones who is also my fav female fantasy author alongside Janny Wurts with Kate Eliott not too far behind. Then again haven't read Kelpie's stuff yet....

For me No. 1 is of course Sword Of Shadows, fantastic! No .2 I thought was Barbed Coil and No. 3 was The Book Of Words trilogy. As you'll know Words came before Barbed which came before Shadows, so I could really see an incremental improvement in JV's writing with each new release. For me there's no comparison b/w The Book Of Words and Sword Of Shadows trilogy, be intrested in your thoughts here??.

Shadows for me is far superior, although I'm probably focusing more on the writing style and characterization than anything else here. In fact when I started reading Shadows I had to check if this was the same author who had written Words, seriously for me the leap in class was that much LOL!!!.. Of course this is also good IMO because for me it says that Jones has really develooed as a writer. In fact interestingly enough I remember reading somewhere that she admitted that she was still learning her craft as she went whilst writing Words.

 

[Jay]

So once again, what did you think of it? Have you read all the books? Did you enjoy it? Did you hate it? What were you favourite elements of it?

I thought Caverns of Black Ice was really one of the best first installments into epic fanatsy I have read (perhaps a tier below the very best). I really enjoyed it, and expected mroe out of the secodn installment, Fortress of Grey Ice which was a bit of a disappointment, when comapring it to the first. I really enjoyed it all, the history and ambition of Spire Vanis and Penthero Iss, I liked the clans (The Dog Lord is IMHO the best character in the book along with Malafice Eye). The magic is present, but powerful but limited, even to the greatest of the age. The foreshadowiing o the power of the Sull, told different viewpoints equally well. There is a lot to like abotu Cavern's of Black Ice IMHO. It's at the evry least promising, and at best a damn good piece of epic fantasy.

I don't really consider this a work of dark fantasy; but I guess that's sujective.

At this point I consider Caverns of Black Ice the best single Jones work I have read, by a large degree. That said, I can't say its the best series as the second installment was a bit drab. I am looking forward to A Sword From Ice
which keeps gettiing delayed, however.

The Peake style part in the castle (I've forgotten its name now) was also great

Like I said above I think it's Spire Vanis (or was that just the tower?), hell I could be spelling it wrong anyway


I'm not getting involved in the whole Eddings/Jones thing. I'm just goig to say Eddings is one the worst writers I have ever read in my life.

 

[GOLLUM]

I am looking forward to A Sword From Ice
which keeps gettiing delayed, however.
I'm not getting involved in the whole Eddings/Jones thing. I'm just goig to say Eddings is one the worst writers I have ever read in my life.

I think you meant A Sword From Red Ice...

Totaly agree with your comment on Eddings, a no-brainer in more ways than one IMO...

*GOLLUM prepares for frontal assault by Eddings fans*..

 

[Jay]

think you meant A Sword From Red Ice...

Yup, typo, thanks

 

[a|one]

Interesting Alone, I'm slightly different in my order of Jones who is also my fav female fantasy author alongside Janny Wurts with Kate Eliott not too far behind. Then again haven't read Kelpie's stuff yet....

For me No. 1 is of course Sword Of Shadows, fantastic! No .2 I thought was Barbed Coil and No. 3 was The Book Of Words trilogy. As you'll know Words came before Barbed which came before Shadows, so I could really see an incremental improvement in JV's writing with each new release. For me there's no comparison b/w The Book Of Words and Sword Of Shadows trilogy, be intrested in your thoughts here??.

I have to agree with you about Sword of Shadows being better by far, I think for me what made Book of Words better than Barbed Coil was the characters. I just really liked Tawl and several others more than I liked the characters from Barbed Coil (who's names I can no longer even recall ).
Sword of Shadows is definitely one of my favourite fantasy series' of all time.

 

[GOLLUM]

I have to agree with you about Sword of Shadows being better by far, I think for me what made Book of Words better than Barbed Coil was the characters. I just really liked Tawl and several others more than I liked the characters from Barbed Coil (who's names I can no longer even recall ).
Sword of Shadows is definitely one of my favourite fantasy series' of all time.

Yeh I think I'm with you on this point alone.

The characters in Word were certainly more fun and interesting than Barbed Coil BUT the writing itself for me was much tighter and of a better standard in Barbed which is why I'm giving it the nod ahead of Words. Not to say characterization, plot etc.. isn't central to a story but the standard was just markedly better for me and more mature/serious (what I tend to like hard to believe as that is... ) and of course Shadows was several notches above that again in tems of both characters and writing style....

 

[Rosemary]

I think that JV Jones is a wonderful writer. I particularly enjoyed both Caverns of Black Ice and Fortress of Grey Ice. So I am really looking forward to getting my copy of A Sword From Red Ice.

I agree in part with other comments about the dark fantasy element. I have found that the majority of Fantasy books that I have read, also have that element in them, although maybe not so much.

However, as much as I enjoyed her books, I will only be keeping my David Eddings books in my bookcase and not Ms Jones.

 

[Brys]

I said "not that much better" - so still quite a bit better, but if you took out a lot of the dark elements, then while the writing style is quite good, it is never amazing, and realism is a major focus of the Sword of Shadows series, so removing it would severely weaken it. Then, removing the dark elements is an arbitrary concern, because it is such an essential component of the series.

 

[GOLLUM]

Then, removing the dark elements is an arbitrary concern, because it is such an essential component of the series.

One of the main points I was atempting to make I think..

Actually I thought the writing was very good by Jones in parts but then again maybe I'm easy to plase...

 

[Brys]

The writing was very good in comparison to the bulk of fantasy - it's miles ahead of Eddings, Feist, Cook, Clemens etc, but IMO it isn't quite as good as Erikson, Martin or Bakker, and nowhere near Peake, Harrison, Calvino or Mieville. I don't read Jones' novels for good writing, because while it is good, it isn't astounding, but because of the great plot, worldbuilding and characters - the same reason I read Martin.

 

[GOLLUM]

The writing was very good in comparison to the bulk of fantasy - it's miles ahead of Eddings, Feist, Cook, Clemens etc, but IMO it isn't quite as good as Erikson, Martin or Bakker, and nowhere near Peake, Harrison, Calvino or Mieville. I don't read Jones' novels for good writing, because while it is good, it isn't astounding, but because of the great plot, worldbuilding and characters - the same reason I read Martin.

Yeh that's probably fair comment Brys when you compare her prose against those great writers. She's certainly not in the top bracket, I'll happily concede that but still good and I do read her Sword Of Shadows trilogy partly at least for the prose because I found it really quite atmospheric at times.

I'll be intrested to see how Harrison's prose compares to these authors when I read his series.

No mention of Wolfe in your list Brys, for me he deserves a spot near the top of the prose tree.

 

[Jay]

I'll be intrested to see how Harrison's prose compares to these authors when I read his series.

Has to be among the very best, Harrison is an absolute master, and I find it depressing Viriconium isn't nearly as lauded as it should be by popular genre fans. This series has peers but honestly I haven't read anything that is clearly superior.

Calvino is simply one of the greatest authors ever IMHO regardless of what genre we are speaking of. As most know he was a member of the Ouvroir de litterature potentielle a movement. The mathematical symetry of Invisible Cities is astounding by iself not to mention how ridiculously well written it is.

One of the few books that one can say is mind-blowing without even getting past the Table of Contents.

 

[GOLLUM]

HMMM.. if that's the case I'm very much looking forward to reading my copy of Virconium..