cover image Prisoner of the Iron Tower: Book 2 of the Tears of Artamon

Prisoner of the Iron Tower: Book 2 of the Tears of Artamon

Sarah Ash. Spectra Books, $23 (480pp) ISBN 978-0-553-38211-2

In the second installment of British author Ash's Tears of Artamon trilogy, a skillful mix of horror and romantic fantasy, vampiric dragons soar against a wonderfully gothic backdrop straight out of Tolstoy by way of Stoker, Dumas and Tolkien. At the conclusion of Lord of Snow and Shadows (2003), Gavril Nagarian, Lord Drakhaon of Azhkendir (a princedom in the Rossiyan Empire), succeeded in casting off the Drakhaoul, the dragon-daemon that possessed him. Now Gavril; his mother, Elysia; and his new love, Kiukiu, a gifted""spirit singer,"" face the wrath of Prince Eugene of Tielen, whose forces Gavril prevented from taking Ashkendir in book one. Eugene returns to defeat Gavril and send the former portrait painter to a mental institution where his brain becomes the subject of mad experimentation (shades of Shelley!). Ash's playful, tongue-in-cheek brew of Russian history, folklore and myth explores age-old moral dilemmas in a plot as tricky and unpredictable as a Gypsy tarot reading. Fans will look forward to the ultimate confrontation between blood-sucking firebirds and humans in book three.