Customer Reviews

Threads of Malice

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Threads of Malice, like its predecessor Ghosts in the Snow, is extremely compelling and engaging. I couldn't put either of them down and read each of them in one sitting. However, they are not for the squeamish. Both books are very graphic and rather violent.

Durbric Byerly is the equivalent of a detective or inspector. His particular quirk is that he sees ghosts. Now, these ghosts don't talk, but they communicate in other ways and, unfortunately, the ghosts are often ambiguous in their wants, needs, goals, stories, help etc... esp. when Durbric gets rash or impatient with them and reads them wrong. In a region near Castle Faldorrah, young men are disappearing and turning up murdered. Durbric and his small group of apprentices stay with friends in the region as they investigate the murders, which soon prove to be serial killings of the worst kind. The region being investigated holds the part of the tale of Durbric's personal history, beyond the death of his wife mentioned in the first book, and this history blends in with the current case. While all of the "good" characters are focused on solving the crimes, there are a few subplots to advance the series. One of the things I like about the books is that the answers to the puzzles and mystery do not come easy and the stumbling along the way seems honest, not contrived.

This was a hard one to put down. In fact, I didn't get to bed until 1 am, after finally giving in to my husband's eye rolling. Then I was up at 7 am with my nose in the book by 5 after. I LOVED IT! What a spectacular job Tamara Siler Jones did. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!

Threads of Malice is the continuing story of Dubric Byerly, the head of security at Castle Faldorran, who just happens to see dead people. Cursed since the murder of his wife, Dubric has spent the last forty or more years seeing the ghosts of people who have been murdered. These ghosts physically drain him, causing severe headaches and fatigue. And they hang on until he solves their murders. While this is the second book by Jones, it's a stand alone novel. I highly recommend you read Ghosts in the Snow first though, to get to know the world and characters.

This visit to Faldorran finds young men vanishing in the far reaches of the kingdom. A body has been found in the river and a young painter has vanished. Dubric, his squire Dien and two young pages Lars and Otlee set out to get to the bottom of the disappearances.

Fast paced, violent, disturbing, gripping and horrifying in the best possible way, Threads of Malice is a book you don't want to read alone at night. It only took about 2 pages to capture my interest and Tamara Siler Jones' excellent writing and story held it in a death grip until the final page.

The blend of forensics, suspense and fantasy is something I've never read before finding Jones and I think it's safe to say she is the master. I was wondering "who done it" until the very last pages and there were plenty of red herrings that I swallowed hook, line and sinker. There is nothing predictable about this book.

I highly recommend it to lovers of suspense and fantasy. It's only fair to warn you though, it's graphic and gory. There are scenes of rape, torture, pedophilia, murder and unbelievable brutality that are disturbing. It's good vs. evil in the most profound sense. In the end though, it's all well done, helps move the story forward and ratchets up the fear for characters you've come to know and love. She even manages to work a romance in. Incredible.
Bravo Tamara, I can't wait until the third book comes out.

Threads of Malice takes up about a month after the events in Ghost in the Snow. It's the proverbial dark and stormy night when a young boy, Eachann, rides his donkey nearly to death to arrive at Castle Faldorrah to beg Dubric Byerly to come to The Reach because young boys are being taken by The Dark. Dubric learns that the people of The Reach have written repeatedly begging for assistance from the castle and no one has answered their call. Dubric gathers his men immediately to go to The Reach and he's very curious to learn why those letters have never reached him. There's no time to loose for The Dark is taking young boys and men without a trace...and so far there's only been one body found.

Dubric knows The Reach, he fought there in the magic wars when the Mages were being killed for their oppression of and demented, horrific treatment of the people. The wars have been over for years and Byerly killed the worst of the lot, Foiche, freeing The Reach from his tyranny. When Dubric enters The Reach he begins to hear stories that remind him of Foiche and then he meets the ghosts; over twenty of them, clambering for justice. They have all been extensively tortured, abused, and then murdered. All the ghosts are of young, slim boys and men. No women are among them. Dubric begins his investigation with Otlee as his assistant and gets little help from the Lord of the land or the other men in high places.

Dien and Lars move on to Dien's wife's family's home as the center of their part of the investigations. Dien's father in law is seemly insane but as the investigation goes on it begins to look like not all his babble is insanity. When Dubric visits the farm Lars begins to note that maybe there is a range to Dubric's ghosts and that might be a clue to finding the killer or killers. There are enough suspects and suspicious people to keep Dubric and his men feeling like they are tilting at windmills. The mystery keeps you guessing until the final pages because the clues are laid spare but clear and with each new one the suspect list reshuffles.

Much of the story rest on some back filling of Dubric's past. We learn more of his wife and his actions in the magic wars. We learn more about the world and the kingdom of Faldorrah--that leaves the reader with more questions than answers. Dubric must face his past and his actions to solve these crimes for they have been years in the making--and all to return a madman to power.

This is definitely not a book for the faint of heart. While descriptions are crisp and non-voyeuristic they can give a person with an active imagination nightmares and a vile taste in the back of the throat. I think the worst part is knowing that people do indeed do these things to each other and that other people look away. There's the mystery and the story and there's also the growth and change in the characters we met in the first book. No one will be the same after this story -- not the characters and certainly not the reader.

I couldn't put this book down, I read it straight through to the end.

This book is fantasy but it has grit; truly evil (and disturbing) villain(s), a noble and haunted main character (Dubric), the stalwart assistant (Dien), and the young man being tested as he comes of age (Lars).

Well developed characters and mysteries mixed with tiny sprinkles of humor and romance really make for a well rounded book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes non-creature based fantasy and/or horror-mystery.

Welcome to the world after, where the horror of bloody-handed mages is just barely in the past, and Dubric, among others, are committed to making the past stay there.

Tamara Siler Jones is committed to making the horrifying come to life with vivid, blunt, graphic language that puts a reader right there, just like the CSI shows do. She doesn't pull any punches. Heck, she throws plenty of extra weight behind each blow, and she doesn't hide any of the horror that comes with investigating each murder as they happen. She even lets us in on the other side of things, the villains.

If you don't like blood, gore, evil, and maliciousness, don't read this book. Honestly, you'll have nightmares. But the morality is clearly on the good guys' side.

She also does something in her books that I don't think could be done on film or any other medium: she uses children and young teenagers as part of the investigations, and she puts them in as much, if not more, risk than any horror movie. Bravo. She's my heroine.

Following Ghosts in the Snow, Threads takes the same investigative team and puts them in a wider, rural context where boys and young men are disappearing (and getting graphically tortured/raped as well). This is quite a page turner and hard to put down. Like the first book, anybody a tiny, tiny, bit squeamish should give it a wide pass.

However, if you like the combination of gory mystery and fantasy it is hard to beat. I especially like the fact that the crime aspect isn't overcome by the fantasy part, unlike the menagerie of beasties in your typical Anita Blake novel. Nor does it fall back to a caricature of hard boiled detective stories.

While the first book mostly only hinted at magic, it is much more present here, thru Dubric's recollections of the mage wars. The story is carefully crafted, with some hints, or rather logical clues, pointing at the guilty party. If you pay close attention you may very well guess who did it (I didn't, though I had the right idea). I did think that the end was a bit unsatisfying though, because it concludes quickly and it isn't made very clear who was doing what and why (sorry, can't say much more without entering spoilerzone).

One thing, which nagged me in Ghosts as well, is that you never quite get to reconcile Dubric's quiet competence and scientific approach with the stereotypical dumb and brutal medieval ruling class. In a medieval society made up of small towns and villages, where most of the population is engaged in substistence farming, where life is cheap and short, who has taught Dubric the values of investigative techniques? Isn't he overkill to solve the average police issues likely to be found in a smallish castle?

There are hints that the context is not quite medieval - children talk about learning geometry, more than a few can read, and the mages were preceded by a technical/scientific civilization. Hopefully, the next books in the series will take the time to explore the world a bit more as well. And bring back the Mages as well!

Since the murder of his wife years ago, Castle Faldorran Castellan Dubric Byerly sees ghosts of homicide victims demanding justice. These otherworldly essences will not leave him any respite haunting him and leaving Dubric exhausted to the point of collapse until he resolves their respective case.

The youthful geese tender Eachann arrives from the northern reaches fatigued, injured, and distraught claiming the dark is killing young boys with the latest victim Braoin, a cousin of the wife of Dubric's squire Dien. Dubric, Dien and two pages Lars and Otlee head to the Reach to investigate a string of homicides by an apparent serial killer. To his chagrin upon reaching the crime scene vicinity, ghosts of the victims assault Dubric demanding justice. However, he and his staff begin to believe that the adversary is invincible as well as malevolent.

The second Dubric ghostly tale is a much more vividly darker novel than the more capricious sprightly GHOSTS IN THE SNOW. The efforts to use forensics during the medieval era and thereby before the science of criminology has been created add to a fine blending of mystery, horror, and even a touch of the fantasy. Interestingly the investigation is filled with twists and turns, red herrings, and dead ends (literally and figuratively) that makes for a fine who-done-it. Still this is Dubric's tale as he battles ghostly migraines, evil spirits, rotting corpses, bumbling assistants, and a touch of love to battle an unbeatable foe.

Harriet Klausner

This is the second book by Jones that features Dubric Byerly as the lead investigator. All in all these books are much more heavy on the horror than the fantasy.

In this book Dubric and crew end up going to the Reaches to investigate the disappearance of a number of young men/boys. The residents of the area are convinced that "the dark" is stealing the boys and that there is nothing to be done. Dubric believes that the disappearances are a simple case of a serial killer being on the loose. Things end up being more complicated than Dubric could have guessed.

I thought this book was much better than the first book of the series. Dubric and Lars are great characters. The story is well written and well put together. There is a lot of action, lots of plot twists and turns, and the characters have a lot of depth and are interesting. This really is a well-written series, it's just not my type of series.

I have trouble reading these books because they go outside my areas of comfort regarding the blood, gore, and torture in them. This book crosses into uncomfortable, hard to read about areas for me. They are also very scary and I am not big into scary books, they tend to creep me out and give me nightmares. The only reason this book is considered fantasy is because it takes place in a fantasy type realm (castles, pages, etc.) and it touches lightly on dealing with magic. The book is definitely more of a horror/crime type novel.

So, while this book is superbly writing, the characters are very unique, and the plot is deftly twisted...I won't be reading any more of these books because they are too scary for me. Laugh if you like, but my husband was getting sick of me turning all the lights on in the house at night, so no more of these scary books for me.

***WARNING******WARNING***
If you are easily disgusted, if you are at all squeamish, if you are put off by graphic descriptions of violence, do not, I repeat, DO NOT read this book. To quote a review from the Sequential Tart, "For a nice, Mid-West housewife, Jones is a sick lady. I mean that in the nicest way."

In The Reach, the semi-wild outer lands of the kingdom of Faldorrah, young men are disappearing, being taken by someone, something unknown. Two molested and mangled bodies have washed up onto the shores of the local river, prompting Dubric Byerly and his investigative team to travel north, into The Reach and into the grip of dark and malevolent magic.

Searching for the latest missing boy, Dubric, haunted as he is by the ghosts who've died unavenged, soon realizes the deaths are far more in number than he could've imagined. Now, more than one boy's life hangs in the balance. The safety of Dubric's pages, Otlee and Lars, two young men ripe for the taking, is endangered by the plague of evil magic, once thought to have been wiped off the face of the earth, which threatens to rise again. Following the tangled skein of clues leads Dubric into a confrontation with the most venomous of evil mages, a foe Dubric fought once before many decades ago in the soul-scarring Mage Wars. Will Dubric have the strength to vanquish this evil once and for all, before it destroys everyone and everything he loves?

I thought the first book was quite graphic and gory, but it was just a prelude to the violence depicted in Threads of Malice. Now, for me, that's not a problem as I'm not a squeamish person, but I'm not kidding about the warning I posted above. If you've got a strong stomach, then by all means, go ahead and read this book. If not, please don't, although you will be missing out on some mighty compelling and powerful storytelling. Jones' books are not all about the violence; each story weaves a complex mixture of romance, faith, family, and ordinary heartbreak into the horrendous crimes which sit at the heart of each book. One might not think that tender scenes of budding love and innocent courtship could fit amongst scenes of such brutal horror, yet they do, providing a balanced counterpoint of lightness to the weighty bleakness of the crimes. Tamara Siler Jones isn't a familiar name in the fantasy genre, but I think it's high time she gets some well-deserved notice.

I thank all the reviewers who mentioned the graphic nature of this book. The descriptions are clinical, and detached, but still vivid and chilling. That being said, this is not quite CSI in written form, which I was expecting. It would have been nice to see more of the science. Many of the clues that are found in the story don't actually help to solve the crime. Another fault of this book is that I felt that it was far too long and the length did not do much toward advancing the story or developing the characters. Easily 150 pages of this book could have been edited out and we would have been left with a stronger, tighter story. There is an entire subplot in the book about Lars working on the farm and his romance with Jess that could have been handled in 20 pages. Finallly, the thing that struck me most about this book is that much of the clinical detachement that the writer uses to desscribe the crimes also carries over to her charcter portrayals. When we cut to to the passages that are from the pov of one of the kidnapped boys, the thoughts, words, actions, of the boy do not begin to reflect the horror of the situation that he is in. In some ways, his torture seems not make much of an impression on him. Yes, there are some casual remarks about his physical pain but I don't think the writer ever puts us "there" with him. Even his demise doesn't make much of an impression. This same glossing over is seen in the end of the book. When a character is found alive, the atitude is almost ho hum, and little more attention is given to the situation. I felt this was poorly done given that the author had been so meticulous in describing the facts. It's the characters that make those facts important.

But as I said, this was a decent book. Dubric is an intriguing character and I liked Lars. Dien was pretty flat in this story, very 2 dimentional. Otlee was very cute and I think he has lots of growth potential though he is a young character. I certainly want to go back and read the first book and will read the 3rd book when it comes out. I think this writer has a lot of potential and look forward to seeing her growth as a writer.