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Northern Storm (The Aldabreshin Compass book 2) by Juliet E. McKenna
01/11/2004 . Source: Donna Jones 
pub: Orbit/Times Warner. 596 page paperback. Price: £ 7.99 (UK), $10.99 (CAN). ISBN: 0-84149-167-5. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out websites: www.OrbitBooks.co.uk
The Southern Territories of Chazen, now governed by the disowned Daish warlord Kheda, are desperately trying to recover their lands and rebuild their lives after the attack of savages wielding magic.
Chazen Kheda now vows to rid the outlying islands of the small pockets of savages that remain. In doing so, he finds a new and far more terrifying threat awaiting him and his comrades. A huge impossible beast, a fire dragon.
Meanwhile, his ex-first wife of Daish is trying to bring slander and cause mischief within his new household, making trading for the new first wife of Chazen, Itrac, nigh impossible.
Even with the barbarian Dev, the mage that Kheda brought from the North to defeat the savages, they have not much hope of surviving this new threat. Dev has no experience with these infamous beasts and he turns to an aid in the magelands of Hadrumal.
Will the dragon be defeated and more to the point have the actions of Chazen's new warlord brought an unquenchable evil taint to the domain?
Juliet McKenna has done it again, but this time she's gone that one step further in telling a fantasy epic to its fullest.
We meet up with some familiar faces from 'Southern Fire' in the malefic Dev and the endearing Risala to whom Kheda has become totally smitten. McKenna also introduces us to a few new faces. One interesting character is the Azazir, the banished wizard from Hadrumal, completely given over to his element and consumed by magic-lust. We meet him after we have met up with Dev's magewoman associate, another new character, Velindre. All the characters, much as the first one, are well-rounded and altogether believable.
The result is, of course, a book that should definitely not be read as a standalone. If you haven't read the first one then you won't have a clue what is going on in this one because of the subtle references to previous events.
McKenna's writing manages something rarely seen off the screens of film and television and that's making a conversation more about what isn't said more important than what is. In a particularly fraught exchange between Kheda and his previous wife, the tension rises to a fevered pitch as the two characters interact solely on the unsaid notions held within their mannerisms and the double meanings of their actual spoken words.
The cover kind of hints that there will be dragons in the book, but the story unfolds and reveals some new angles with which to approach the whole mythology of these sometimes over-used fantasy plot devices. McKenna actually manages to make the experience of meeting a dragon a new and invigorating one, introducing twists to the commonly used traits we see in every other fantasy epic out there.
I loved the battle scenes between the dragons. They were exhilarating and thoroughly entertaining to read. This is where McKenna's writing really takes off. Her descriptive passages are lilting and move the story on at the pace that it naturally seems to flow. Where description could have been over-baked, this was a sumptuous feast of narrative delights.
This then is a worthy second outing for the characters of the 'Aldabreshin Compass' sequence. I unreservedly loved this book from cover to cover and I'm practically drooling for the next instalment. There is only one question I would have to ask though: Why haven't these books been brought out in hardback editions? Such valuable and high writing quality deserves the hardback incarnation.
Juliet McKenna has not only set a benchmark for fantasy writers; she's planted herself a whole new mighty oak to carve her own damn bench!
Donna Jones 
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