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A Sword From Red Ice (book 3 of A Sword Of Shadows series) by J.V. Jones
01/04/2008 . Source: Jennifer Howell 
pub: TOR. 622 page hardback. Price: $27.95 (US) $34.95 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-7653-0634-0. pub: Orbit. 618 page hardback. Price: £18.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84149-117-2. Buy A Sword From Red Ice in the USA - or Buy A Sword From Red Ice in the UK  check out website: www.tor-forge.com and www.orbitbooks.net
Since way back when the first installment of this series appeared and it was the first book I ever bought online, back in 1999, it's been apparent that the trade-off for such incredibly detailed world-building by JV Jones has been the sheer amount of time between installments. It's been four years since 2003's 'A Fortress Of Grey Ice' and the average reader could well be forgiven for failing to remember little more than the main characters' names.
The average reader, I would think, would also be expecting 'Red Ice' to be the last book in a trilogy, as I recall was originally planned. Instead, we get what is now termed book three of, er, five. As much as I love what Jones writes most of the time, I also adore the fact that she was brave and fortunate enough to get that rarest of creatures published back in the nineties: a brilliant standalone fantasy novel, in 'The Barbed Coil'. That is, I used to think that she knew when to stop. Unfortunately, 'Red Ice', beautifully written and harrowing as it is, seems to prove that this is no longer the case.
It's pretty obvious why Jones takes so long to produce books; every possible detail of her characters' lives has been researched and considered thoroughly and I'm guessing it's all there in the text going by how dense the descriptive prose can be at times. This isn't a fluffy fantasyland by any means. Her characters live harsh, fraught lives with death a constant prospect.
That said, I would have been quite happy to follow the two ostensibly main characters, Raif Sevrance and Ash March, for a couple more books, had there only been a little more interaction. Certainly, the different cultures within Jones' world are well thought out and sharply realised, but the sense of alien otherness as the characters struggle within those cultures is just exhausting after a few hundred pages. When it becomes clear that not very much is happening to progress the overall plots neither, the mind starts to wander a little and the characters start to lose you.
As far as the characters go in this installment, Raif is still being tortured and noble but is also the only character able to ferret out some of the wider backstory for the reader. He's also still very, very good at killing things. The body count in this series for animals is extraordinary. You learn pretty quick not to get attached to any fluffy bunnies or cute ponies.
It never ends well and apparently he's fairly hard to kill, though not for want of people trying. As for Ash? Well, Ash does a lot of walking through a wood with a strange man. That's about it. Raif's sister Effie travels down a river with her kidnappers although not much happens there and Marafice Eye rides out with his army into battle.
While Effie's sections are mildly intriguing, they don't really add much except atmosphere. The Eye may still be a great character, but even he is hobbled by being restricted to musing on battle strategy and lots of riding. Stripped of the dynamic between them for this long, neither Ash or Raif are as interesting. Ash, especially, is in spoiled brat mode and swiftly becoming irritating.
Elsewhere, though, there is the usual terrific sense of helpless, suffocating claustrophobia in Raina Blackhail's strand of the narrative: trapped in her decaying clan holding, being undermined and plotted against at every turn. The plot would still be ticking over on this one but that Raina has a certain tenacious grace at fighting her corner to the last. Equally, the dim and devoted giant Crope, still nursing his broken mage master back to health, and the Dog Lord, with his wily determination to keep the remnants of his family safe and start reclaiming what he has lost in the Clan Wars, hold far more interest and reader sympathy than the younger characters' plights at this point.
What we're missing this time around and apparently promised for the next book is enough on the ranger, Angus Lok, who drove so much of the narrative for the preceding volumes, and the intriguing female assassin who caused the last book to end on such a traumatic note.
It's not that 'Red Ice' is badly written by any means. The story of the red ice itself is fantastically horrific. It just ends up feeling padded out by lots of wonderfully written but ultimately unnecessary narrative. For such an intense story, it can't sustain itself for more than 600 pages without inducing brain ache. I have every faith that the next book will correct course again. Please give Ash a decent plot this time! 'Red Ice' is the first slightly clunky entry in a series which has been wonderfully immersive and wrenching so far.
Jennifer Howell
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