THE SPECUSPHERE:
The Crowthistle Chronicles, book 1 by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
written by Heidi Wessman Kneale

Book One: The Iron Tree ISBN:1405036230 I'm a sucker for a love story, even a bittersweet one. I also love a good fairy tale. When The Iron Tree fell into my hands, little did I know my little heart's desires were going to be indulged. Indulgence is the first word I would use to describe this book. Dart-Thornton has spared nothing in the spinning of this tale. She indulges in all sorts of deliciousness to overwhelm my senses and sate my dramatic sense of romance. Jarred, our dashing young desert hero, yearns to see the world beyond the town of his birth. His father left when he was young, for reasons unknown, leaving his son with a curiously-wrought charm and an admonishment that Jarred should never take it off. This charm, it seems, gives Jarred an unprecedented level of protection from minor harm and mortal danger, as well as protection from unseelie wights.

This level of protection serves him well as he and his friends go off to see the world, protecting him from certain death on occasion. However, it doesn't shield him from falling in love with Lilith, a young woman from Marshtown.

Yet Lilith is loath to marry him, for a curse by Janus Jaravhor, the notorious Sorcerer of Strang, lies on her family, that if any seek true love, then the union will suffer after the birth of the first child — that one spouse will die young and tragically, the other driven mad. Lilith's grandfather wasted away with the madness, and her mother as well, no matter how hard she had tried to hide it.

Lilith wishes to spare Jarred from the curse and refuses to marry him. Jarred, not wanting to be thwarted in love, seeks help from mad apothecaries, charlatanistic druids and anyone he can in discovering a way to break Lilith's curse, by discovering how the curse came to be in the first place.

Jarred learns, to his surprise and dismay, he is closely connected to the origin of the curse, thanks to a very nasty secret concerning his grandfather. While this appears to enable him to break the curse and marry Lilith, it seems that they were not completely spared...

I found I reacted to this book much in the way I react to Shakespeare. It takes a while to get used to the language, but once I adjusted, I was well-rewarded with a powerful and passionate story with happy endings, tragic endings, and larger-than-life characters who go to the farthest limit to satisfy the desire — or madness — that gnaws at their souls. Nobody ever does anything by half.

The language is richer than most fantasy novels being published today. Once I got the swing of things, I discovered it did not disappoint. Language is a palette for Dart-Thornton, and she insists on using every colour she can. I love the indulgent richness of her words. At first this makes the dialogue sound ungenuine — for who really talks like that nowadays — but as this is a fairy tale, being told in a higher style, I gave Dart-Thornton the benefit of the doubt. Of course her characters aren't going to talk "contemporary". They are of heroic proportions, thus their words suit them well. I hope this style is the beginning of a new trend and not just a moment of brilliance, to be eclipsed by drabber works.

Dart-Thornton has also created a vast fantasy world, peopled by fairy-tale creatures, both fair and ill, to either aid humankind or to curse them sorely. The magic found herein is not the run-of-the-mill wave-your-wand sort that has become cliché. This is the kind where you must leave bread and milk out for the fairies lest they steal your firstborn. It's been a long time since this sort of otherworldliness has been seen in fantasy and I welcome it back.

I recommend this book to those of passionate spirit, who want a story that makes contemporary life look like a poorly-made faded seventies film about "real people" in gritty situations involving ugly Chevy cars and uglier hotel rooms. This is escapist fiction at its best, to be devoured again and again.