What I enjoy most about Jones’ books isn’t the mystery plot — though they are interesting — so much as the characters. That was a good thing for this book, because the plot didn’t work for me and left me unsatisfied (and more annoyed the more I thought about it) at the end.
Valley of the Soul, the third about Dubric Byerly and his employees/friends, was a lot less gory than the second book, Threads of Malice, which made me happy. This one involves the hunt for a possible blood mage who’s been killing sheep, maybe for practice before starting on people.
The characters are great — they’re likeable, but not overly so, and they face real problems with realistic reactions (or overreactions). There was a little bit of the “if the characters actually talked about x, the plot would disappear” problem, but it didn’t seem too unlikely that they would avoid talking about x.
The plot problems:
First — I almost put it down very early, when a character did something a) stupid and b) out of character. Jones is usually very careful about motivations and actions, and this stuck out as something that the character only did because it was required by the plot. I made a conscious decision to pretend it hadn’t happened or that it was a clumsy way of introducing a red herring.
Second — Spoilers behind the cut!
If your plot is a mystery,[1] then shouldn’t the climax be the scene that resolves the mystery? Valley has two plots, but that isn’t evident until the end, when the characters defeat the mage, but learn she wasn’t responsible for the murders. This makes the entire plot about the mage pointless in the context of the mystery.
It’s obviously necessary for future books in the world — Jones is setting up a larger plot about the mage war (which seems to be escalating even though most people think it’s long ended) — but it doesn’t work as a red herring for the mystery plot, because the mage is in fact quite dangerous and the characters do have to deal with her. She just isn’t responsible for any of the dead or undead animals or people.
Unfortunately, the mage is a lot more interesting than the real killer, who is revealed and dealt with almost as an afterthought.
I’ll keep future Dubric books on my list to read, but I won’t look forward to the next one as much as I looked forward to this one. Jones has an interesting world and excellent characters, but with each of her books so far I’ve been less and less impressed by the plot.
[1] Technically, it’s a police procedural. I suppose the focus is more on *how* they find the killer than on *who* the killer is. But it shouldn’t end up putting more weight on a different plot entirely.