It’s time I came clean. Despite my fastidious facade as an A-List arbiter of aesthetic excellence - nay, the veritable Taste Tsarina of the zeitgeist - I have a sordid secret.
I am reading a fantasy novel.
I’m not talking Tolkien, with his musty, spunk-smelling arcania and fey, gay little songs. I don’t even mean 
the semi- socially acceptable Pratchett, with his winking, Dickensian dwarves and fulsome, frolicking footnotes. I mean the real, thousand page, ‘Lloris saw the pale steel of a Dhell clan dagger flash before her and turned with a swing of her platinum plait to espy the mighty wolves of Moragh descending the valley’ deal, beloved by middle-aged men with wispy beards and multicoloured pantaloons the wyrld over.
J.V.Jones has none of the restrained accomplishment of Rosemary Sutcliffe, Alan Garner and Ursula Le Guin, the robust historical humour of Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden, or the pure brilliant weirdness of TH White. Her recently completed Sword of Shadows trilogy is undeniably over-ripe and under-edited, turgid tripe compared to my usual fare of lean literary Kobe beef - but it’s earnest, baroque bombast is so pleasurably, swellingly awful, I almost want to stop hiding it behind Orhan Pamuk dustjackets, pop on this Anna Sui ensemble, and out my inner clanswoman. Sort of.
Anyway, something tells me that Tennyson would have loved it. When the real world is recessive, weary and war-worn, sometimes you just have to give it a myth.
Guilty pleasures. ‘99 Red Balloons’, custard creams, Derek and Clive. They’re good for the soul; cleansing, reaffirming. Sword and Sorcery novels belong on children’s bookshelves but then what is so amiss with dipping back into childhood now and again? You can don your bedsheet cloak of invisibility and stealthily creep about the house in search of the Ancient Colander Helmet of Vagbas-Murh, and still be back in front of the Oracle of Flimbimbimbam in time for the latest adventures of the marauding carnivorous monster terrorising the enchanted wood.
Or ‘The Rupert Bear Show’, as earthlings call it.
Oh, Wess. That bought a little tear to my eye. Tights worn on your head to represent warrior braids are also an excellent prop.
And the family dog makes an excellent warhorse, albeit a slightly erratic and irritable one when saddled with an apron and frogmarched into battle on the shadowy Plains of Minofarg round the back of the settee.
Great news! J.V. Jones is planning five, maybe six books in the ‘Sword of Shadows’ series, so there’s plenty more top-notch fantasy fare to follow…
Drop us a line if you’d like to see any more of our titles, yeah?
Orbit Books UK
Darren, baby, yeah. Send me books. Lots of books. With ponies and dwarves and ice-strewn tundra. I’ll bathe naked in them.