Dennis Jones, author of several Cold War thrillers including Rubicon One and Winter Palace, has decided to give the sword-and-sorcery genre a try. The Stone and the Maiden is the first installment of a trilogy called The House of the Pandragore.

The novel’s heroine is Mandine Dascaris, heiress to the throne of the Ascendancy, who has a mystical vision and a quest laid on her while she’s fleeing a barbarian army sacking all the major cities of her homeland. Her companion-to-be on the journey is Key, a foreign officer in her father’s army, who rescues her from a surprise attack. Successfully evading capture, she must flee the Ascendancy’s capital city after her corrupt half-sister has their father murdered and seizes the throne.

The invaders are being aided by an evil magician, Erkai the Chain (he wears an enchanted chain around one arm), who is trying to break a 1,000-year ban on magic use. To collect enough power for the spell, he must absorb the energy of many people dying in torment – the invasion provides him with victims. Mandine has to find a talisman called the Signata before Erkai unleashes the banned magic. With Key, she sets out on her quest with both Erkai and her sister’s assassins in pursuit.

An obvious comparison is Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, and while Jones’ prose lacks the rich texture of Kay’s and his plotting is linear to the point of predictability, The Stone and the Maiden is perfectly enjoyable. The strength of Jones’ writing is its cinematic vividness and swift pacing. The world of the story is also well-constructed, borrowing liberally from the collapse of the Roman empire and early Celtic folklore. It’s not Tolkien, but I had a hard time putting it down.