"Jarred, recently come of age, is leaving the sun-scorched desert village that has always been his home. He set out with a band of friends to explore the world and seek out the truth about his fatherm who came to the village a stranger and departed when Jerrad was ten, never to return.
After the travelers are set upon in a ravine and several of their number sustain injuries, they seek shelter ina the Marsh of Slievmordhu. The waterlands are a farextending tapestry of cool green streams, ravelled woods, and reed-fringed lagoons - a world of dazeling beauty as different from there homland as might and day. Here Jarred meets Lilith, and in a single moment he realizes that his life can never be the same again. But neither of the young lovers are aware how closely linked their fates - and their past - really are. During a visit to Cathair Rua, the red city, Jarrett stumbles across the secret of the iron tree, and with it an umbearable truth about his fathers identity."
The discription of the noth the desert and most especially the marsh give you a clear vision of where they are living. The superstician and the magical dangers leads well into the story.
The reality of living in a small community for me was well showen by the boy who assumed that he was going to marry lilith, even when it was married he could not quite believe it (dispite the fact he had never courted her).
will have to look out for the follow up novels

I enjoyed Cecilia Dart-Thornton's first series, The Bitterbynde Trilogy, quite a lot. Ok, the prose waxed a bit fulsome at times, but the plotting was good, the characters and situations interesting, and I loved coming across references to Australian plants and animals in the usually proto-Celtic default setting that so much fantasy has. So I was looking forward to her next outing.

Hmm. A number of reviewers have commented on her excessively lavish descriptive passages, and yes, they get annoying. Cloying, really. Not least because they tend to be heavy on adjectives and light on interest. It reminds me a bit of bad amateur Romantic poetry – you can understand why it's there, but she should know better by now, and it's something that a good editor should have reined in before publication. And there are places where it's just weird – she routinely talks about her hero, Jarred, as having “cardamom-coloured hair”. As far as I can tell, she actually means “brown”. But cardamom isn't brown. It's grey-green (the ground spice or the pods themselves – the plant has a bright green leaf, but you don't see them very often). About the only creature I can think of that has hair even vaguely cardamom-coloured is a sloth. (And even that is only the colour of the mould that grows in its fur!) I suppose she could be referring to the colour of the seeds, but that's like calling something banana-coloured when you mean black. Yes, the seeds are black. But that ain't the colour that banana conjures up. And there are other howlers like that – not enough to make you throw the book across the room, but enough to break you out of the mood. Willing suspension of disbelief depends on the reader trusting the writer. And errors like that make it hard to do.

Story-wise, The Iron Tree is a classic romance tale set in a fantastical landscape. Boy sets off to seek his fortune; boy and brave companions battle through peril; boy meets (inevitably beautiful) girl; boy and girl overcome adversity; boy and girl come to a suitably romantic end. You could imagine Charlotte Brontë having written it. The twists are interesting, and she doesn't flinch from tragedy when the integrity of the story demands it.

So the book is problematic, but shows promise. The next one in the series should be interesting. ( )

Jarred has a special gift – but it is one he must keep a secret. Still, his friends have their suspicions about him – he seems to evade death so regularly, that they wonder if he is invincible. Now Jarred and his friends are leaving their desert village and heading out to explore the world, in search of adventure. Jarred is hoping he will also find answers to the mystery of his father’s disappearance when Jarred was ten.
When Jarred meets Lillith he knows his life will never be the same again – but he doesn’t realise how closely their fates are linked. Then, when he visits the Red City, Cathair Rua, Jarred uncovers another secret, that of the Iron Tree, and at the same time the uncomfortable realisation of his father’s identity.

The Iron Tree is a gripping fantasy novel, with unique peoples and settings, which will fascinate lovers of the genre. Jarred’s problem – his apparent immortally – is an intriguing one which will provoke thought.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton is one of an ever-growing clutch of fabulous new Australian sc-fi and fantasy writers. This is the first book in The Crowthistle Chronicles and the following volumes lived up to this good start. More power to her pen. ( )

Jarred has a special gift – but it is one he must keep a secret. Still, his friends have their suspicions about him – he seems to evade death so regularly, that they wonder if he is invincible. Now Jarred and his friends are leaving their desert village and heading out to explore the world, in search of adventure. Jarred is hoping he will also find answers to the mystery of his father’s disappearance when Jarred was ten.
When Jarred meets Lillith he knows his life will never be the same again – but he doesn’t realise how closely their fates are linked. Then, when he visits the Red City, Cathair Rua, Jarred uncovers another secret, that of the Iron Tree, and at the same time the uncomfortable realisation of his father’s identity.

The Iron Tree is a gripping fantasy novel, with unique peoples and settings, which will fascinate lovers of the genre. Jarred’s problem – his apparent immortally – is an intriguing one which will provoke thought.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton is one of an ever-growing clutch of fabulous new Australian sc-fi and fantasy writers. This is the first book in The Crowthistle Chronicles and the following volumes lived up to this good start. More power to her pen. ( )

I wanted to like this book. I really did. But it failed to meet even the littlest of my expectations. Dart-Thornton is no doubt a wonderful writer. I loved the way she wrote about the landscapes making you feel like you're there yourself.

However, the vivid landscapes obviously comes from her attempt to be another Tolkien. It's obvious on her site, and in the reviews that are printed on the cover of most of her books. She failed to realize Tolkien was not simply appraised by his mere rich descriptions of the environments that the characters traveled through. The character development of each member made the book a wonderful read.

Dart-Thornton failed in making you care about the characters at all. They all seemed to be exactly the same. They talked the same, thought the same, acted the same, everything was the same! There was no distinct characteristics among any of them, well other than Jarred possessing a magical talisman that he carried around his neck. This frustrated me greatly because I felt I didn't care what happened to any of the characters in the book.

The way the characters talk in the book threw me off while I was reading. I guess Darth-Thornton was trying too hard to write like most classical novels do, yet she failed miserably. If she wanted people talk as if they were trying to impress an English teacher then at least save it for the kingdoms or rich-people of the world. Not the characters who have lived in poverty all their life and yet speak like, "Pray, do not extrapolate further. Your words distress me."

It seemed to me that the author threw in a LOT of unnecessary words to make the story appear Tolkien-ish for lack of a better term. But all it did was complicate the sentences when they should have been more concise. "It raced toward me at an amazingly great rate." This gets annoying when every sentences is written like this. "It raced toward me" would have done the job.

She could have also stopped the obvious Tolkien mimicry. I understand wanting to use Tolkien's style but all she did was blatantly copy him. The talisman is basically the ring, where Jarred mentions his fear of the race of men being tempted by it. Oh, but his friends knew about the talisman all along! And they want to join him on his adventure across the vast world of Tir. Yaadosh, the youngest boy of the group is the joker that reminds me of Pippin. While they were at the "marshlands" Pippin, I mean Yaadosh, spilled the beans about Jarred's talisman to a group of people while drinking. Then they get chased by wights with skeletal faces, and then some other beings that have been disfigured and are no longer men because they dwelt too long with evil. Remind you of ringwraiths? Well if not, the flight from these masked villains from the group's homeland to a new territory will.

I almost cringed when the mother told Jarred, "That thread is looking thin. Let me go find a metal chain to put that talisman on." The Tolkien-connection this author held made the book too predictable to enjoy.

Last but not least that everyone should know before trying this book. It's NOT what the summary on the book says. Jarred leaves with 8 young boys from their village and roughly on page 100 he finally meets Lilith for about three lines long, and then leaves the village and her behind. I stopped there and gave up. I was halfway through the book and not a single exciting thing had happened at all. The group of boys do nothing but walk around attending mundane festivals and talking of mundane things such as "Hey, you think I can hit that bird over there!"

"No you totally can't."

"I bet I totally could."

Boring. ( )