Winter Be My Shield (Jo Spurrier, HarperVoyager)

In the first book in her ‘Children of the Black Sun’ series, Jo Spurrier manages to avoid the traps that many debut fantasy novelists fall into. Her characters are credible, their actions are rational, and the villains are evil but not stupid. While this is a fairly standard fantasy for the most part, Spurrier has worked a few variations into the mix. A small group of rebels finds a girl half-frozen in the snow. One of the rebels, Isidro, has recently been rescued from the powerful torturer-mage Kell, and recognises the girl as one of Kell’s servants. But Sierra is much more than that. Kell, and his apprentice Rasten, are bloodmages who draw their power from rituals of pain and suffering, while Sierra is a natural sympath, converting all pain around her into potential magic that the mages can tap into. With the rebels being hunted by the Crown, Sierra being hunted by Kell and Rasten, and the threat of betrayal on both sides, there is a constant undercurrent of angst. To her credit, Spurrier manages to navigate the intensity of her characters’ situation without the story becoming too bleak. It’s not quite a ‘dark fantasy’ but it’s close. This is a solid recommendation for fans of Glenda Larke, Jennifer Fallon, Fiona McIntosh and Trudi Canavan.

 Stefen Brazulaitis is a freelance reviewer and the owner of Stefen’s Books, a specialist genre fiction bookstore in Perth

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Category: Reviews