Many readers at this point would say, “Been there, read it (and read it and read it…)”Īnd to start with, that’s pretty much what we seem to get.
There’s also a bad guy being evil, a shy young hero with a destiny, a feisty young heroine under threat with her own destiny to reach, a romantic interest, and a quest for a token of power. What put me off this one for quite a while is what I thought were the clichés: tribespeople and primitive lifestyles of leather and wolf/seal/bearskin, which when combined with shamanistic ramblings and token magic seem to have wandered out of a Jean M. The characters travel through icy wastes to find the titular Cavern of Black Ice to do this and where Ash’s fate awaits. Unless Ash discharges her Reach-power she will die. Ash is under attack by the Bound Men, who are trying to possess her through her dreams and use her to return from The Blind to the world of the living. Cant tells them that Ash is a Reach, the first person for centuries that can connect the worlds of the underworld, called The Blind, and Ash/Raif’s world.
Raif, Ash and Angus escape the city, chased by Marafice Eye, Iss’s repugnant Protector General of the Rive Watch, and at Ille Glaive meet crippled sorcerer Heritas Cant. There he meets runaway Asarhia March (Ash), a young step-daughter of Penthero Iss, a sorcerer and Surlord (overlord) of the city. Raif finds the new leader, violent, unpleasant and vindictive and also suspects Mace to be the cause for the slaughter, wanting to lead the clan into a takeover of the other clan groups.Īfter women and children of the Bludd clan are massacred in a revenge ambush, Raif runs away from the tribe with his uncle, Angus Lok, and he ends up in Spire Vanis, one of the southern cities. Raif and his brother Drey return to the remainder of the clan, to find that the dead clanleader’s foster child, Mace Blackhail, has not only taken over as tribe leader but also has stirred the tribe into war with the neighbouring Bludd clan, blamed for the massacre. Raif Sevrance is a young clansman with a secret magic power (the ability to guide, with his mind, arrows to the heart of a living thing) whose father and clan group are mysteriously murdered whilst they are on a hunting trip. JV Jones’s series (now up to Book Four, Watcher of the Dead, with Book Five currently being written*) is initially set in a sub-Arctic-type world, with a culture and a subsistence lifestyle which made me think a la Inuit. Thought it was time I read a series that’s been staring at me for over a decade. The review first appeared in October 2011. Occasionally we resurrect old reviews to show what we thought of a now-regarded-as-classic book.
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