The Barbed Coil

Kind of torn with this book - the first 75% of the book is soooooo slow, nothing happening, no sense of urgency, no great quest, no sense of anything epic (this is epic fantasy after all), very little description of how magic is happening or if it even is happening - the last 25% was amazing, everything came together, the characters finally started to fill out and although there still was nothing epic about the book there was at last a little sense or urgency and purpose.

First 75% of the book is 2 stars
Last 25% of the book is 4 stars
I'll average it out to 3 stars for the book - recommended but only if you have time to kill.

A different take on magic, although the “how” of what makes some scribes able to imbue their illuminations with power and not others is largely left unexplained, and an interesting story that held my attention all the way to the end.

I felt that this book had a couple of novel and interesting fantasy ideas, written in a readable style, but embedded in a fairly cliché plot structure with fairly stereotypical characters. In short, this came across as just OK.

The device of a person from our world being transported to the fantasy world is getting old. When this transportation is an essential element woven through the plot, it can work well. When it's done so that the author can explain the world out loud to the reader, it's disappointing. That was the case here; Tessa's "our world" origin serves absolutely no purpose in the story and is quickly forgotten. In fact, she suffers almost no culture shock in her transition from the 20th century to something like the 17th.

The show more character roles were annoyingly "stock". Retiring, handicapped Tessa becomes the beautiful and powerful heroine. Ravis is the dashing man with a mysterious past, the consummate fighter, who starts off as the bad guy but secretly has a warm heart and is really the good guy. The prince-who-didn't-know-he-was-a-prince must fight for his throne. The bad guys are unrelentingly evil. In the end, everyone pairs up and lives happily ever after…except the bad guys who are all dead. They are no gray characters in this novel.

On the positive side, the whole concept behind the story was fairly interesting. I would have loved more depth to her ideas of Ephemera and Illumination, for they showed originality. And Ms. Jones writes well—though the characters may have been a little flat in depth of character, they were well-drawn and the writing flowed easily along.

I don't rule out the possibility of ever reading another Jones novel, but she's certainly not an author I'm hungering to read again. show less

I've seen Jones described as "aggressively mediocre" but I really liked this. The characters were just complex enough to be engaging. As was the plot.I had a bit of a problem with C. marrying Angeline. What's-his-name's desctiption of her as his "mindless child-wife" was a bit too accurate. I mean, she amused herself by counting her dog's toes! And Tessa and Ravis's romance developed a bit too quickly.

While at first, I thought that her writing was a little overdramatic (quite a lot of rain-tossed stormy nights, etc.) it definitely grows on you. Her characters are all well portrayed, being neither so good you want to retch, nor so bad you yawn when they show up on screen. While the mood of the book is rather heavy, there are a few instances of humor to lighten it up. Not as many as I'd have liked...but still. I'd have preferred it if she'd have set the time-line up a bit more explicitly, and defined the geographical placement of certain landmarks, but those're just details. By the middle of the book, I didn't want to put it down - sleep, activity, were just random irritating interruptions. (Growl at stupid body. You don't need sleep! show more Pull yerself together man!) There was a fair amount of action - sometimes the times when the characters went off into bouts of self-musing were disrupting (and like I said, a bit overly dramatic) but she soon pulled them out of it and sent them back into the fray. But it did make me cry, over something that usually wouldn't have. (Yeah, I'm a sucker.) Overall, a very good book. 8.5/10 show less

Modern-day Earth woman Tessa McCamfrey is transported to Rhaize via a magical ring, discovering she possesses a unique talent for sorcerous illumination, which she uses to help mercenary Lord Ravis and the orphaned prince Camron of Thorn fight the tyrannical, Coil-controlled King Izgard, leading to epic battles and a quest to restore balance using powerful, patterned magic.

This book is set in a fantasy world where magic comes through illuminations. The idea is interesting, the text involving the illuminations is well told and interesting. The rest of the book is a bit bland.

The main character, Tessa, is from our world, who is drawn into another world and drawn into a quest to free a magical device, I'm being vague to avoid giving away too much. The characters are rather one-dimensional. Tessa seems all to accepting of her situation n this new world. Most of hte minor characters seem focused on one objective.

The plot is a simple plot rehashed in many other fantasy stories, but does come to life when the illuminations are drawn. I felt the book was just a device to carry off the idea. As it is, the story show more isn't badly told, but it does seem like it could be a lot more. show less