This story revolves around the hidden identity of a young desert boy, Jarred, and the secret of the Iron Tree in Cathair Rua. When he sets out to discover the world Jarred meets Lilith, a young woman from the Marshlands, and falls in love with her. He decides to stay wtih her rather than continue with his adventurous friends, but the two lovers cannot live in calm and peace of mind for as long as a curse hovers over their heads. Lilith's family line has been doomed to endure failed marriages as whenever they wed one of the couple dies young and the other goes mad. Jarred believes his immunity will protect him from this fate so they marry anyway, but is he right?
I think that the idea behind 'The Iron Tree' is great, however there did not seem enough meat to the story to warrant such a lengthy book. What started well with exciting events, humour and some well-written new characters and places quickly deteriorated into a dull piece of writing that I had to force myself to finish. 'The Iron Tree' is pretentious with old-fashioned language which added nothing to the world. I was constantly bombarded with lengthy descriptions which drew focus away from the main plot to unnecessary details, and lists (e.g. items in a room) which I learnt to skin over.
A fantasy world will always have foreign names and places, however I felt that these were overdone in this book. Too many names to remember yet they and other ideas were not original, merely what exists in the real world with small, but obvious modifications. the characters themselves seemed to have everything too easy and the few conflicts that they faced were overcome too easily. This is the first fantasy book in a long time that I have not enjoyed or thought well-written. I felt the author had decided one day to write a book and plunged straight in rather than working out how to make her idea work well. Do not bother reading this book unless you are very, very bored.