A Man Betrayed is the second part of J.V. Jones' Book of Words trilogy. The first book in the series, which I have already reviewed, is The Bakers Boy.
Like any good second part in a trilogy, A Man Betrayed starts off where The Bakers Boy left off. Jack and Melli are back together again, traveling together, hiding out in a chicken coop, waiting for a storm to pass. As Jack is hauling away the body of one of the men they attacked to gain their shelter, he is captured by a man named Rovas, just as a group of Halcus comes along and captures Melli.
In order to convince Jack to kill the general that captured Melli, Rovas, along with the two women he lives with, tell Jack that Melli was killed by the general. Infuriated, Jack allows himself to be kept in the small cottage, while Rovas teaches him how to use many different weapons. While he is there, he falls in love with the young girl, Tarissa. It is not until later that he realizes he has been betrayed by all of them.
Meanwhile, Melli is sold to a flesh-trader, who then sells her to none-other than the Duke of Bren! Little does she know that her father, Lord Maybor, is also in Bren, sent as an envoy representing the King of the Four Kingdoms, bearing a marriage proposal from Kylock to Catherine, the dukes' daughter.
Tawl, the knight of Valdis, blind from the guilt of murdering the wiseman Bevlin (though not of his own free will), flees to Bren, closely followed by the young pickpocket, Nabber. There he finds himself fighting in the pits and drinking entirely too much, in an effort to help forget his past failures. He eventually fights and defeats the dukes' champion, and swears his own oath to the duke. This then puts him into the position of becoming Melli's protector.
All the while, Baralis is busily plotting and scheming, planning to forge a dark empire. He is also busy trying to do away with his arch enemy, Maybor. Their rivalry is furthered by the fact that Baralis would love to see Kylock marry Catherine, while Maybor would hate to see such a marriage take place, and will do anything to prevent it.
The story is held together by wisps of prophecy and fate. At one point, while in the care of the flesh-trader, Melli overhears one girl saying of her: "Where I come from, we call people like her thieves. Their fates are so strong they bend others into their service. And what they can't bend they steal".
There are also several versions of Marods' prophecies (from his "Book of Words"), with only the original being the true one. The true version goes like this:
When men of honor lose sight of their cause
When three bloods are savored in one day
Two houses will meet in wedlock and wealth
And what forms at the join is decay
A man will come with neither father nor mother
But sister as lover
And stay the hand of the plague
The stones will be sundered, the temple will fall
The dark empire's expansion will end at his call
And only the fool knows the truth
However, Tavalisk, archbishop of Rorn, has a slightly different copy, and he feels that the person the prophecy is speaking of is him. He sets out to play his role, or at least what he believes to be his role, in the prophecy.
During the first book, Marod's prophecy didn't make a whole lot of sense. By the end of A Man Betrayed, it is starting to come together, though there are still some holes that need to be filled.
The characters, by this point in the story, have really filled out. There is enough background information on all of them by now to really give them some depth. Each of them has their own history, with their own personal demons.
The storyline, while getting away from the similarities of The Dragonbone Chair (as mentioned in my review of The Bakers Boy) still isn't entirely original. It seems as though I have read it all before, but yet is slightly different. Yes it is typical fantasy, not even great fantasy. But it at least attempts to tell a story and get it finished with in three books (unlike certain other authors I will not mention).
J.V. Jones manages to tell a rather dark story without being entirely depressing. There is some gore, and some sexual scenes, but she is not overly explicit in her descriptions. Recommended age: 15-16 and over.
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