A Fortress Of Grey Ice Book 2 of the Sword of Shadows

A Fortress of Grey Ice is an almost entirely satisfactory second volume of the Sword of Shadows sequence that started with A Cavern of Black Ice. It separates its hero and heroine and puts them through very different experiences--Raif is hardened by dishonour and hunger into the hero that will successfully kill one of the more monstrous interlopers into his world from a darker one, Ash takes the decision to atone for the inadvertent acts that have made such incursions possible. Elsewhere, a convict frees his sorceror's master; a young challenger exploits the tangle of clan politics to make himself a name; older and wilier contenders survive for the time being--Jones manages a collection of characters with very different motivations successfully enough that we end up with mixed sympathies and a fair amount of time for all of them. The fantasy world she creates here is less conventional than that of many of her rivals--she draws inventively from human cultures that live in cold places and this is a fantasy that draws as much from Inuit and Finnish legend as it does from Scotland or Scandinavia. There is a controlling intelligence here which makes up for occasional overcomplication and overwriting. Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW