The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles [Hardcover]

Cecilia Dart-Thornton (Author)

Book Description

Series: Crowthistle Chronicles | Publication Date: February 7, 2006

The beautiful maiden Jewel is the center of her parent's joy. She is the embodiment of their true love and she has grown up surrounded by peace and love in abundance.

Jewel's world cruelly shatters when her parents are suddenly killed and she and her uncle Eoin are forced to flee. Leaving the only home she has ever known, Jewel learns that her parents, caught in a tangle of a tragic prophecy, had hidden in the marshland for years to protect the secret knowledge that Jewel is the last of the line of the Janus Jaravhor, the dreaded sorcerer of Strang. That she might be the one person in the world who could unlock the mysterious Dome that is told to hold all of Janus's secrets. And that King Maolmordha now knows of her existence and will stop at nothing to find her.

Pain and loss follow and Jewel must make her way alone. Rescued by a traveling band of Weathermasters, exalted magicians who control the heavens for the rich and powerful, she is taken to High Darioneth and is accepted into this tightly knit community.

Not just accepted, but loved, for one of the young weathermasters beheld her and his heart was lost.

Jewel is left with the promise of true love and a powerful secret. But which path will she choose--and who will suffer if she makes the wrong choice?

An interactive CD-ROM of the world of Tir will be included in the hardcover edition of The Well of Tears, which will allow the reader to enter into Dart-Thornton's creation and and experience all the wonders of this mystical and magical land.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Australian author Dart-Thornton's ponderous second fantasy is set in the world of Tir (after 2005's The Iron Tree), where the fulfillment of a tragic prophecy has left Jewel an orphan. The last descendant of Janus Jaravhor, the Sorcerer of Strang, she alone can unseal the Dome of Strang and reveal its treasures. Fleeing her marshland home, Jewel finds sanctuary with a miller's family in High Dairioneth, where she grows to maturity. Persuaded by transparent trickery that her ancestral curse has been lifted, she travels to the dome determined to acquire whatever lies within. Accompanied by Arran Stormbringer, a weather mage, she's oblivious to his love for her. Jewel gradually becomes aware of Arran's feelings, but the romance is minimal. Despite some imaginative flashes, the poetic pseudo-medieval style exasperates more than it delights and further burdens a plot already weighed down with needless scenes and reiteration. An interactive CD-ROM brings Tir visually to life. (Feb.)
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Review

"With influences ranging from Celtic and Norse folk tales to Shakespearean tragedy, Dart-Thornton has crafted an impressive start to an epic journey down the corridors of myth and legend....readers looking for an intense and old-fashioned magical world will eagerly anticipate the next step in the journey."--Romantic Times BookClub Magazine on The Iron Tree, Book One in The Crowthistle Chronicles

"The world of Tir is an intriguing place, so filled with spooks and apparitions that it is hard to believe any land is left for mere humans to live on....Cecilia Dart-Thornton has created a uniquely beautiful world in The Iron Tree…."--Sci-Fi.com on The Iron Tree, Book One in The Crowthistle Chronicles

"...Dart-Thornton conjures up her world of Tir and its rituals and beliefs in the luminous yet hard-edged manner of Jack Vance or Mary Gentle."--The Washington Post on The Iron Tree, Book One in The Crowthistle Chronicles

"With scenes as vivid as any Technicolor extravaganza, The Iron Tree will capture readers' imaginations."--Starlog on The Iron Tree, Book One in The Crowthistle Chronicles

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (February 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765312069
• ISBN-13: 978-0765312068
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,007,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cecilia was discovered, as a baby, in a wooden lifeboat that washed ashore on the rugged coastline of a remote isle in the southern oceans, between Australia and Antarctica. She spent her early years on Si-Sique Island, raised with the family of the lighthouse-keeper, Albert Ross, who found and adopted her.
Her origins could not be traced. Who were her parents? Had they been drowned in a boating accident? Where had she come from? Was she of noble blood? Alas, no answers could be found.
Cecilia flourished like a rare orchid, even on that windswept isle,in the rough-and-tumble company of her seven stepbrothers. They taught her fencing, archery and equestrian skills, at which she excelled. Her favourite hobby, however, was writing stories.
Recently, at the age of sixteen, she was 'discovered' on the Internet when she posted some of her work to an Online Writing Workshop. An editor contacted her by email, and within a few weeks Time Warner U.S.A. had signed Cecilia in a six-figure deal. They published her first trilogy, THE BITTERBYNDE, in hardcover - the first time they have ever done so with a new author.
Cecilia packed her mascara and departed from Si-Sique isle - to the sorrow of her seven handsome stepbrothers, who were all achingly in love with her.
THE BITTERBYNDE series has now been translated into four languages and is distributed throughout more than seventy countries.
Cecilia's life alternates between seen and unseen worlds of vivid strangeness, beauty, peril and passion.
It is a little-known fact that most authors actually write their own biographies. Some might say that for Cecilia the boundaries between virtuality and reality are blurred. It is for the reader to decide whether this is a completely implausible fairytale or whether it contains a grain of truth...

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Could not even finish this book, July 5, 2006

By 

Mica (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles (Hardcover)

I am a huge fan of CDT, but this book is just STUPID. You really see how much trouble she has with plotting in this sequel that fails for so many reasons.

I love the way she weaves all the fantasy into the story, but the plot here is so boring and has all been done before, ie the search for the fountain of youth...PLEASE!

Characters come and go and we are left with the god-like Jewel with her saphire eyes and some other guy who's name escapes me. I could not get interested in their travels or care much really for either of them as they were impervious to harm and seemingly invincible. Other characters were so insignificant they are just little blips in the story and you end up getting confused with who is who and why they are there and what's the point and so on.

I just had to stop reading it as i was bored to tears. I love her detailed descriptions of things, but this time it just annoyed me and i was skimming over them to hurry up and see if there would be some sort of plot at the end of them.

Maybe it would have got better, but after about 350 pages of nothing much happening at all I realise i'm glad i just borrowed this one rather than buying it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is so boring, January 28, 2011

By 

Lee - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles (Hardcover)

I'm intrigued that anyone could get to the end of this book. I'm at page 91 and haven't read a book this boring in many many years. The writing is far too descriptive and wordy and a plot is difficult, if not impossible, to find. The writer constantly repeats the underlying background, the heroine (if that is what she should be called) is bland. I have been able to develop no feeling for her at all, in fact, I wish she and not her uncle had been taken by the unseelies. The authors overuse of the word like made me skip many sections of the text and remember, I've only read 91 pages. I'm not likely to finish or if I do I suspect page after page will be skipped. All in all the book seems to be about a young girl with no personality and who cannot be injured, looking for her roots. Her lack of personality makes you not want to care about her, and her invulnerability removes any tension that should be built from the unseelies and other not-so-nice characters. Don't waste your money on this one.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I wish I had just checked it out..., January 16, 2007

By 

Lisa (Auburn, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles (Mass Market Paperback)

instead of buying it! I re-read parts of Book One, The Iron Tree, so I would be "up to date" on this sequel. I must admit that I didn't like the main character, Jewel, at all. I don't see why whatshisname (the guy that married her) liked her either. The book began to drag when they started their journeying together, and I must admit I started out skipping pages, then whole chapters, then all the way to the end to at least see how it turned out. I didn't feel any of the fascination that I had with The Iron Tree.

Of course with all that skipping I may have missed something vital that could have resulted in a better feeling about the book.