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Submitted by J Dowling 
(Dec 20, 2007)

JV Jones latest release "A sword from Red Ice"is the third book in what is now apparently a series of five. The first two books in the series are amazing, the standard of work achieved is stunning.

JV Jones's talent is in her ability to create a world, which is completely original; it does not borrow itself from anything. The characters created are very real and the names given are almost anointed upon each that character, so strong do they belong to the individual in question.

Five years after the previous book was released, comes the third in what perhaps was originally was a trilogy.

Five years is a long wait for a sequel, so much so that my wife paid $65.00 for it as a gift for me, I couldn’t wait for the Australian release and had it shipped from America for my birthday.

A Sword from Red Ice is without doubt the worst book that I have read since I can’t remember when. The book has absolutely no pace to it what so ever, character development is nil and since this book has 12 main characters the new release adds up to alot of nothing.

Concerning the pace of the book or lack of it the book flits from one character to next, from chapter to chapter. As such nothing is achieved. Character development stalls after every chapter as we move on to another one of the 12 main characters. The result is mind blowingly frustrating.

One of the major characters spends the entire 600 plus pages sitting in a canoe floating down a creek musing on her life and where its taking her. Another invades a clan round house, chews the cud on local politics then turns around and heads home.... he doesn’t even fight anyone. I finished that chapter banging the spine of the book against my head wondering why I was too gutless to throw the book in the bin and go to sleep!

Actually, we now have so many main characters, that some whom are central characters in the first two books now for no reason at all, are barely mentioned. One character has a 580-page gap from one chapter to the next.

Raif Severance the main character achieves nothing; he gets sick, gets better, finds a sword does nothing with it, book finishes.

Many of the other characters receive a worse fate then Raif's, in so far as much, that nothing happens. The enemy of this world is apparently "the Endlords" Ms Jones and the good people at "Tor" (the publishers) may in fact find the real enemy is boredom.

I can imagine that with a five-year gap between releases, there may have been tension between Publisher and Author. For my sake, I hope there was, as I do not want to be the only person who suffered through this debacle.

I realize that this review will offend people, but when reading this review remember two things: JV Jones was my favourite author so being this critical is hard. Therefore, when Ms Jones releases her next offering in 2017 my unborn son will be able to read it to me and then you can correct my disparaging comments.