Customer Reviews

Fortress of Grey Ice (Sword of Shadows 2)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Even better then the first book!

J.V Jones' 2nd book in the 'Sword of Shadows' series is simply a great fantasy/adventure read.

The story continues where book I left off and follows sequentially Raif, Ash and Effie; their stories take some interesting twists and turns throughout the course of this book. The terrain is the same basic bleak winter tundra (although spring appears to be coming) of the first book.

One of the many strong points of this novel is the deliberate pacing of this story and its telling. Then add to this a great basic story, plus an author's with the ability to weave a good tale, and you end up with a memorable fantasy work. And although different in various ways, this work, at times, conjures up memories of the writing quality and techniques found in George R.R. Martin's 'Iced and Fire' series and Joe Abercrombie's 'The First Law' trilogy. (see P.S. below)

The only niggling complaint would be that the map (and in fairness, the one provided is fairly good) could have provided a little more detail; details that give some names or markings as to where our protagonist were located during some of their journeys. I realize this is probably a 'personal' concern, but I've always liked to have a sense of position and of distance/proximity to other geographic locales when reading fantasy/adventure; it just makes the prolonged treks easier to visualize in my mind.

Conclusion:
A 2nd book in this series that is of the highest order; a great story, superbly told. 5 Stars.

Ray Nicholson

P.S.
I defy anyone not be moved to the point of being emotionally distraught by chapter 5 in this book. A subjective opinion...certainly; but read this one chapter and see how it affects you.

Love the series and have even re-read the first 2 books while waiting for the sequel... Waiting 2 years now! I would highly recommend Sword of Shadows to pretty much anyone looking for depth of character, great story lines and some of the best descriptive writing around. I would highly recommend you find another few writers too if you want to pass the time waiting for the sequel. Sword from Red Ice has been advertised for like 3 years and you still can't get it.... a word to the publisher, you aren't the only game in town. If you want loyalty, don't make us wait a decade....

Well, I've read the second book now. No waiting for me, as I just discovered the series. It was still good. The writing is still ...immersing. She separates completely the stories, and I did as others have done, and skipped to and fro to finish each story line, except for Raif and Ash. It was all worthy, all good, no problems, very exciting.

And that brings us to the end, the very end (not counting Angus Lok and the firehouse). Raif's bit. So, after all that build up, he kills the monster, it falls on him, and he's like "oh better get up! time to start a new nice life." and his pony runs to meet him and they ride off into the sunset, no problems. Like he just read the Sunday newspaper. Like that. In like 4 sentences.

A whole book of amazingness, and then wraps it up in a little bitty paragraph that makes no sense to what went before. THAT was SO weird. I'm not sure how to take that. Did she just get sick of it and want to go to bed? I dunno. Despite that, the whole damn book is written fantastically, so still gets 5 stars in my eyes. Looking forward to the next, that everyone says is "filler". That's ok with me. Still: Weird, almost contrived and unpleasant ending.

It's almost impossible for the second book in any series to live up to the expectations created by such an excellent beginning, and Fortress of Grey Ice is no exception to the rule. However, that needn't condemn what is still a very good book. Considered on its own merits, this is still better than 90% of the fantasy that's out there, and it's a piece of something even greater.

Some of the plot consistency I mentioned in my review of CoBI is missing, with events a bit less connected and motivations a bit less clear. Almost every character at some point seems just a little too willing to trust a stranger, jump to a conclusion, or embark on a quest for no discernible reason. Some storylines seem to rush ahead at a breakneck pace, while others that will surely connect with them seem adrift.

On the plus side, all of the atmosphere and strong characterization that made the first book such a wonder are still there. The world though which they move is rich and detailed. There are new characters, new places, and new connections. There's every reason to believe this second installment is just a lull before the other side of the storm hits in the third book. Even LotR had sections that dragged a bit, but those are often necessary to set things up for the grand sections that follow.

The one thing I truly hated about the book was the cover, and that can't be blamed on the author. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that whatever's depicted on the cover is totally unrelated to anything in the book itself, and the art is simply not very good besides. Don't let the third-rate cover fool you into thinking this is anything but a first-rate book.

After reading Jone's first book I couldn't wait for the second to come out, and I wasn't dissapointed. Jones retains all the mystery and sensetivity in her characters that she showed us in her first book. Even with several characters her story flows together well.
Jones spins the story of the clans going to war and now Raif is abandoned by Ash and travels in search of acceptance from a people he has been cast out by. Ash is being led to the Sull's mysterious land and has been invited to become Sull. Between these two characters alone I was so enthralled that I wouldn't put the book down until I had finished it.
Her book is at a perfect pace, not too slow or too fast, but a pace that lets you think about whats going on and at the same time throwing in some interesting action scenes.
Along with all of her other characters, Jones has definetly written a winner that is on par or even better than her first in this series.

J.V. Jones delivers another amazing manuscript with A Fortress of Grey Ice. I have been a fan since her first book, The Baker's Boy came out 8 years ago, and she has only continued to improve with astonishing ease. With her new novel she advances the overall story of the series in some surprising, but delightful ways. The only real problem was that for the last hundred pages I had to force myself to read, not because it was terrible, but because it was so good, and I knew once I finished I would be overcome with depression at the thought that I would most likely have to wait another three years for the next book!

I stumbled across A Cavern of Black Ice quite by accident. I think I finished it in a day or so. A Fortress of Grey Ice was a good sequel.

JV Jones writes really well. I read it during an Arizona summer, and I could still feel the cold.

The basic setup is great -- simple and clean. You've got the southern cities, the northern clans, and the mysterious Sull. It's the clans and the Sull who do it for me. The reader slowly learns more and more of their fascinating societies and history.

I'd call the settings low-magic, another thing that appeals to me. There aren't wizards and sorcerers walking around lobbing fireballs and lightning bolts. Instead, there's a hint of magic, magic that often comes with a price.

I'm reading George R R Martins Song of Fire and Ice Series right now. He and JV Jones seem to have a similar style. Their characters tend to think alike. I think it works in some respects, but not so well in others. The characters too often seem all knowing. It's as if they're always able to tell when another character is lying, and they're then able to sense the underlying motives for that lie.

Both authors make use of telling the story through the eyes of several characters. I sometimes get the feeling that each author has written two template paragraphs for each character and then copies and pastes them at the beginning of each character section.

Back to Fortress of Grey Ice ... I think Jones has just about the perfect amount of detail interwoven with the story. As the characters move through the harsh clan holds, the reader is treated to some brilliant writing on the difficulties and challenges of surviving in that environment.

Good story, good setting, and interesting, well-developed characters.

First of all, I should state emphatically that this book (and the earlier book in this series) is excellent. Jones has a strong, detailed, highly imaginative writing style that is refreshing to read in a genre that has nearly run out of promising authors. Most other reviewers on this site have thoroughly covered all of Jones' many strengths, and it serves little purpose to rehash them.

That being said, I have noticed several problems that seem in stark contrast to her otherwise great writing. It would be unfortunate if one were to buy these books after hearing nothing but rave reviews that will not discuss her faults.

One of the more frustrating of these is the authors desire to endow her characters with almost supernatural mood-reading abilities. Personally, I have never been in a conversation with someone and read much into a "darkening of the eyes", whatever that even means. In fact, so much is conveyed in the conversations in this book "under the surface", without words, that I'm starting to doubt my own conversation skills. There's a whole world of communication that I've been missing! I want to emphasize how distracting this writing style is. There are conversations that involve more thinking and analyzing of the other's thoughts than actual speaking. Imagine a converstation like that! "Thank you for coming. We have a lot to talk about." Five minute pause while both people stare at each other, analyzing every minute facial movement and gesture. "Well, you asked me to come here. Should we start?" Five more minutes...you get the point. Its more than a little ridiculous.

A second, more glaring issue is Jones' overuse of narration. There are literally whole chapters where no action takes place and no words are spoken between characters. Perhaps if that were to happen in just one chapter, when all others moved swiftly, it would be powerful. But the author seems to feel the need to TELL us what her characters are thinking, rather than SHOWING us through actions or dialogue.

This point may be a little niggling, but I've noticed that no one ever does anything "roughly", it is always "not gently". There have actually been several times I had to re-read a sentence to understand exactly how character A grabbed character B, and what that implies, because of the author's reluctance to use a phrase that does not involve a qualified gentle action.

Finally, and this is perhaps my most serious critique of Jones' writing, is the egregious lack of judgement--or worse, lack of action--of her characters. So many of the problems in the story could be solved if people simply DID something, usually the painfully obvious thing. For instance, so many of the problems in the Blackhail clan could be solved if Raina would simply tell everyone she knew that her bastard of a husband had raped her to force her into marrying him, which was itself a rather ridiculous plot device in the first book. In another example, Raif suffered days of torture and faced imminent execution for a crime he never even committed, but refused to tell his captors of his innocence because he did not want to stain the honor of his clan--who had banished him, and had in fact committed the very crimes Raif was being accused of! Simply put, it is maddening. It reminds me of those old 80s sitcoms where the entire infuriating episode is driven along because of some ridiculous misunderstanding, and where if one character just stopped for a moment and had an open conversation with someone else, the entire problem would be solved.

Don't misunderstand me. This is very, very good book. However, these problems are so distracting that I cannot honestly say it deserves more than 3 stars. Any fan of the fantasy genre will definitely enjoy it. Think Robert Jordan mixed with George Martin. If Jones manages to avoid the "Jordan Bug" and wraps this up in another book or two, this could well be one of the best series to be published in the past 10 or 15 years.

As one might expect from the obvious length, there's a lot going on in Jones' second work of this series. The book is constantly shifting between locals and characters, offering many storylines, each of them interesting and tension-filled in their own right. Jones has a nice touch for when to turn away and when to return, seemingly having no trouble juggling the multiple plots, which in turn means the reader also has no problem. The important characters are too many to name (another testament to Jones' juggling ability), but again we spend a lot of time with Raif the clan outcast and the various members of his family--brother, sister, widowed mother, uncle; Ash March--the girl "Reach" whose ability is a danger to herself and the entire world; and the Dog Lord who is having some buyer's remorse about the means employed and the end result of his attempt to become king of the clans. Whereas in the first book Ash and Raif come together, in this one they are separated and become two wholly independent storylines, giving Jones the opportunity to broaden and deepen our understanding of the world. Through their two stories we spend a lot of time with the Maimed Men (a semi-clan formed of outcasts) and the Sull, an older race than man whose history is given in more detail than in the first, giving the reader a sense of the larger battle between good and evil that is raging above, beyond, and through, the more petty human wars. New side characters are introduced and as is typical of Jones, given full flesh so that they stand as characters in their own right as opposed to plot movers. Raif's time with the Maimed Men and Ash's journey to the heartland of the Sull are both well-plotted and paced and filled with tension. Meanwhile, the clan wars grow as I've said in complexity as motivations become cloudy, unintended results become clear, new characters enter the stage, new alliances form, even between former enemies. Through it all stand the Dog Lord, one of Jones' best characters and most human and even at times most humane (even as he orders the deaths of many) and Raina, Raif's mother who sacrifices her own happiness to do what's best for her clan, though she struggles throughout the book with just what that means. Then there are the storylines involving Raif's younger sister, terrorized by Mace Blackhail and accused of witchcraft; the sorceror's former servant who escapes the mines and treks across the land to try and rescue his lord from below the Splinter, the various machinations of those who would be rulers--the surlord Iss, his general One-Eye, his sorcerous accomplice. What most impresses is not simply the complexity of the plot or the manner in which Jones manages to make that complexity readable, but also the complexity of the characters and their decisions. while grey is the color of the ice in the title, it could also stand for many of the situations the characters find themselves in. There is little clear-cut in this work. Characters are seldom if ever given an easy--there is rarely a choice between good and bad but rather between bad and less bad. Our characters can't avoid killing and Jones doesn't give them or the reader an out by making everyone they kill evil. Characters are torn, they are unsure, and even their best intentions sometimes rebound on them in horrible ways. And here comes the bad part. She does such a good job of creating, maintaining, and raising the tension, such a good job of creating complex situations and complex characters, that several of the endings to the storylines feel anti-climatic in the way in which they happen so abruptly. Resolved or unresolved, they come to a close in a rushed fashion, robbing the book at the very end of much of its power. But, if the biggest complaint is a few dozen pages out of several hundred, I can live with that. This book, rather than be a placeholder for the trilogy, moves the story in interesting, exciting, and unexpected ways and I look forward to the next book, hoping that its ending keeps the promise of its middle.

I like the story line. Good character development and plot movement. This would be one of my favorite groups of books EXCEPT for two items:
1. Editing errors. Smaller issues are the many duplicate words and at one point in the 2nd or 3rd book of the series about 300 pages into the soft cover edition, the printer stuck in about 30 pages (so the book went from page 298 back down to 270). All the pages of the story were included. Finally, at one point in the story about Rob Cormac (one of the 5 or 6 story lines) the author changed Rob's name to another of the story's main characters (Raif). After that I started to expect editing errors which was frustrating.

2. The really big issue: There is no indication that this story is going to end. Worst examples of how this can lead to an incomplete story are George Martin's Game of Thrones and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. J. V. Jones needs to indicate how many more books it will take to conclude the story. I won't buy another book series that doesn't have an endpoint. I don't mind if she says this is a trilogy or even a 5 book series. Just let the story end at some point. do what Joe Abercrombie does and write other excellent stand alone stories after the initial trilogy.

I wouldn't recommend this until the author actually shows that she is able to conclude the story. I would give this 5 stars if/when the story is finished.