Really, really liked this, especially how the author kept making me suspicious of different characters. ( )

This is the second book by Jones that features Dubric Byerly as the lead investigator. All in all these books are much more heavy on the horror than the fantasy.

In this book Dubric and crew end up going to the Reaches to investigate the disappearance of a number of young men/boys. The residents of the area are convinced that "the dark" is stealing the boys and that there is nothing to be done. Dubric believes that the disappearances are a simple case of a serial killer being on the loose. Things end up being more complicated than Dubric could have guessed.

I thought this book was much better than the first book of the series. Dubric and Lars are great characters. The story is well written and well put together. There is a lot of action, lots of plot twists and turns, and the characters have a lot of depth and are interesting. This really is a well-written series, it's just not my type of series.

I have trouble reading these books because they go outside my areas of comfort regarding the blood, gore, and torture in them. This book crosses into uncomfortable, hard to read about areas for me. They are also very scary and I am not big into scary books, they tend to creep me out and give me nightmares. The only reason this book is considered fantasy is because it takes place in a fantasy type realm (castles, pages, etc.) and it touches lightly on dealing with magic. The book is definitely more of a horror/crime type novel.

So, while this book is superbly writing, the characters are very unique, and the plot is deftly twisted...I won't be reading any more of these books because they are too scary for me. Laugh if you like, but my husband was getting sick of me turning all the lights on in the house at night, so no more of these scary books for me. ( )

This is the second book, following Ghosts in the Snow, in Tamara Siler Jones‘ medieval-type fantasy forensic mystery series. It’s a lot more gruesome than the first one, and just as much fun. The mystery plot was interesting, the various subplots fit in well, and the characters come across as very real people.

One of her names drove me nuts: Braoin, or Bray for short. Except I’d pronounce Braoin like “Breen”, so the short version would be Brie like the cheese. Not a big deal, and it didn’t come up much in the book anyway.

I did suffer a slight mental disconnect when the identity of the killer was revealed, because the visual image I’d had of the person turned out to be completely wrong. There were scenes with the killer in them doing the killing, and there were scenes with the killer in his normal life (not identified as the killer). The mental picture I’d built up in my head of those people was *completely* different, so that when I found they were the same person, I first had a moment of disbelief and then had to try to wrench my mental images into agreement.

Some time I’d like to go back through the book to the various scenes with those two personas, and look at what was actually described to see where my imagination had gone wrong. Or perhaps the characters hadn’t been described as vividly as I’d pictured them, allowing my brain to insert its own, incorrect, images. There’s a very interesting description lesson in there somewhere.

One minor quibble: I really didn’t think it very likely that the killer would have an adopted son, given that he’s torturing and sexually abusing teenage boys.

There was one plot event that I really felt was unnecessary. (More on that, with spoilers, at my blog: http://www.scriniary.smallinfinity.net/blog/2006/04/19/4-_threads-of-malice_-tam... ( )

Wow. Very, very, very good. General topic may offend some people. Worth reading despite it--- this is well done. ( )