A MAN BETRAYED

Second part of Jones's sprawling, hardworking fantasy (The Baker's Boy, 1995). Prince Kylock (nobody knows he's actually the son of chancellor Baralis, a dark sorcerer) murders his ostensible father, King Lesketh, and claims the Four Kingdoms for himself. Melliandra, daughter of the scheming Lord Maybor—she fled rather than marry the horrid Kylock—finds herself in more difficulties, while apprentice baker Jack (having, somehow, frighteningly, acquired the power to work miracles) learns swordplay and deception. Kylock's amorous intentions, meanwhile, focus on the ambitious, and supposedly chaste, sorceress Catherine of Bren. Better than volume one, with some feminist teeth showing; but what a pity that Jones didn't make the effort to render each entry independently intelligible.