With her husband dead and a large part of her army destroyed or in retreat, Lyra is beset with enemies both outside and within her empire...

Hearts of Ice (2019. 636 pages) is another in the series of 'The Sunsurge Quartet’, written by David Hair.

It’s a strange thing, regardless of whatever book is sent to review, I have always managed to wade through to the end. This is the first book I have held my hands up and submitted to the inevitable. After the best part of three weeks and only two hundred pages, I have thrown the towel in.

It took a long time to work out just what was wrong.

Like a lot of fantasy novels, Hair has decided to produce a veritable door stop, but a longer book does not necessarily make a better book, there is such a thing as cramming too much into one novel.

In his previous books he has expanded his universe to include numerous characters and cultures and this is all to the good, but sometimes more is too much.

The book is structured through numerous POV characters and through each vignette, they are not long enough to be called full chapters, we switch from one point of the war to another. This is the book's greatest weakness.

Each of the short portions grabs your attention, but just as you get to wondering where the story is going, the author pulls you away, you never get a chance to connect or care what is happening to the characters. The problem is that you spend so little time with each character.

I would have happily read a book about Lyra, or how honour would make a legionnaire turn his back on his orders, or, even the corruption of the church. But Hair has possibly created a monster that Is too large, leaving the reader behind.

6

Charles Packer