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Review: Valley of the Soul

Posted by Mark | Filed under Books, Reviews

Val­ley of the Soul
My rat­ing: 5 out of 5.

My first intro­duc­tion to the world of Fal­dor­rah came about 2 years ago. AWelkin knew the author and had an early copy of the first book, Ghosts in the Snow. My wife and I were over at AWelkin’s house for a visit, plan­ning to watch some anime. How­ever my wife picked up Ghosts in the Snow and was lost to us for the evening, as she wouldn’t put down the book for any­thing. I got my chance to read the book later that week­end and was hooked myself. That first book in this series com­bined ele­ments I really enjoyed from a vari­ety of gen­res into one book and it was fan­tas­tic. Then last year, Threads of Mal­ice, the sequel was released. It was a good read, I found the sec­ond book to be too dark dis­turb­ing for my tastes. At the end of this month, the third book will finally be released. But hav­ing “con­nec­tions” helps, as AWelkin was kind enough to pro­vide me with an advanced reader’s copy. For­tu­nately, I’ll have to give it back and go out to buy my own copy.

Yes, you heard me right. I am quite happy to return this free copy so I can go out to buy my own copy. No, I’ve not lost my mind or been replaced by one of the pod peo­ple. While I tend to keep a grip on my spend­ing money; this book is def­i­nitely worth buy­ing to sup­port the author. This third book in the series is prob­a­bly Ms. Jones best work yet.

This time around Dubric is out of the cas­tle inves­ti­gat­ing some grue­some¹ ani­mal killings. All of the char­ac­ters who sur­vived the Threads of Mal­ice are still around but have def­i­nitely been psy­cho­log­i­cally scarred by their expe­ri­ences. It’s really good nice.… Hmm, it’s hor­ri­ble the sorts of things these char­ac­ters have been put through but it’s great that Ms. Jones con­tin­ues to build on her pre­vi­ous work, rather than just ignor­ing how her char­ac­ters would react after liv­ing through some­thing like that.

While Dubric is out in the field, he almost gets his first ghost of this book. I say almost because it’s just the head, the rest of the ghost’s body is miss­ing. This is some­thing new and dis­turb­ing for Dubric. The rea­son behind the ghosts show­ing up in parts² was a sur­prise but one that fits nicely into the world Ms. Jones has cre­ated. In a sense there are mul­ti­ple vil­lains in this book and Ms. Jones kept me guess­ing through­out the book. Basi­cally, if you like Ms. Jones’s other works (par­tic­u­larly her first book) then I’d highly rec­om­mend you pick this one up as well.

¹ Not nearly so grue­some as the 2nd book in this series, but still rather unpleas­ant.
² If you think reveal­ing that there will be mul­ti­ple ghosts in this book is some kind of spoiler, than you must be com­pletely unfa­mil­iar with Ms. Jones’s work.

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