Stone Heart

Heart of the Staff #3

by Carol Marrs Phipps, Tom Phipps (Co-author)

A great evil awakens to shatter Niarg's peaceful world. In her remote island keep off the shores of Head, the fearsome sorceress Demonica at last learns from her unfaithful husband Yann-Ber the whereabouts of the long lost Staff of Power. He crawls before her to tell her that it has turned up in the hands of her granddaughter Spitemorta, the new queen of Goll, hoping to buy his release from her horrid curse of boils. She is ecstatic about the Staff, but will never forgive his faithlessness. He will be released, all right. He will get to die in one year, after the most excruciating boils yet to come. Demonica leaves for Goll at once. She arranges an accident for the nanny of Spitemorta's son, becomes the new nanny herself and offers to teach Spitemorta how to develop her considerable powers. Spitemorta accepts at once, thereby uniting the two most dangerous sorceresses of the age, determined to conquer the world. Their first step is to find the First Wizard's Stone Heart which would make the Staff the most powerful tool of all time.

738 pages, Paperback

Published August 23, 2012

About the author

I am an author who writes fantasy, mainly with my husband. We currently have nine books independently published on Amazon. I currently live in the country with my husband, eight cats, two cockatiels, a raven and a parrot.

Reviews

[William Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stone Heart (Heart of the Staff) was an intriguing read for me. It was long, especially for a YA novel, but well written and full of fantasy adventure that so many of us love. With a large cast of characters, plenty of action, and lots of plot twists, I thoroughly enjoyed the read!

Synopsis (from the author): A great evil awakens to shatter Niarg's peaceful world.

In her remote island keep off the shores of Head, the fearsome sorceress Demonica at last learns from her unfaithful husband Yann-Ber the whereabouts of the long lost Staff of Power. He crawls before her to tell her that it has turned up in the hands of her granddaughter Spitemorta, the new queen of Goll, hoping to buy his release from her horrid curse of boils. She is ecstatic about the Staff, but will never forgive his faithlessness. He will be released, all right. He will get to die in one year, after the most excruciating boils yet to come.

Demonica leaves for Goll at once. She arranges an accident for the nanny of Spitemorta's son, becomes the new nanny herself and offers to teach Spitemorta how to develop her considerable powers. Spitemorta accepts at once, thereby uniting the two most dangerous sorceresses of the age, determined to conquer the world. Their first step is to find the First Wizard's Stone Heart which would make the Staff the most powerful tool of all time.

What I liked: I thought that Carol Marrs Phipps did an excellent job of creating memorable characters, and built a wonderful fantasy world that fit the story extremely well. I especially liked the character of Yann-Ber, the husband to the witch Demonica. The interplay between the dragons and humans was unexpected, as was the separation of the elves. The action was good, with just enough violence without resorting to graphic descriptions (except for the trolls and their cooking fires, but no spoilers from me)!

What I didn’t like: I thought the book was a little bit long. The large cast of characters made it a little hard to follow who was who and what they were doing concerning the others. The character of Spitemorta was too one-dimensional for me and could have been a more robust personality.

Overall Impression: Nice read. I will be checking out the rest of the series to see what happens in the end! I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a nice little escape from reality and a journey into Carol Phipps’ fantastic world of Niarg!

[Larry B Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stone Heart, Book 2 of The Heart of the Staff series by Carol Marrs Phipps & Tom Phipps is an excellent example how fantasy fiction should be written. It is full of action and adventure which made it hard to catch my breath as the book progressed.

The authors did a great job of developing a tale that was both realistic and believable. It was full of plot twist and turns as you followed the adventures of several groups of characters. With the author's style of storytelling it was easy to follow and watch the various storylines come together.

I really liked the way Carol Mars Phipps & Tom Phipps developed their characters. They provide the background information that helps make the each of her characters come alive. As the story progressed you could feel each of the characters mature and come to their own, both the heroes and the evil witches. This made it easy to identify with them.

I really liked Stone Heart by Carol Marrs Phipps and Tom Phipps and I highly recommend this book to all readers.

[Jason Hubbard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A flawed epic

From the start, this book rubbed me the wrong way, what with punctuation mistakes and missing words. I stuck to it, though, and found it readable enough--it's just that the occasional errors are distracting. I'd be more bitter if the story was no good, but it is pretty good in fact. It is Cleary inspired by The Wizard of Oz or the like, involving truly despicable witches working against good people. Our heroes aren't seasoned warriors or anything--they're just good, loving individuals you can care about.

Now, I know this is not the end of the series, but the ending is one of the most half-@$$ed endings I've ever read. Seriously, cliffhangers are okay, but there has to be some kind of lead-in the next part. Here, the story just ends abruptly, which is very jarring. The two authors may have a lot of experience, but they have a few important things to learn about story structure.

[R. James · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me, this one read like a cross between 'Chutes and Ladders' (Peppermint Forest, among other things) and a takeoff on Alice in Wonderland. That's not a

bad thing, but just how it came across to me. It was a decent story, but the plot was too reminiscent of Lord of the Rings for me to get too immersed.

Additionally, this one was *way* too long - it could easily have done without 200 extra pages and not have lost a thing as it tended to ramble a bit. The

editing also seemed to spiral downward from the middle onward, almost as if it was rushed.

It was an okay read despite those shortcomings, but I didn't reach the end and want to read the rest in the series, unfortunately.

[Flamingcrystal Flamingcrystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stone Heart is a well written story, although I had to concentrate to follow the very large cast of characters...The sorceress Demonica rewarded her skirt-chasing, faithless husband with severe boils, with the promise that at least he would die within a year. *Good for her to prolong his suffering, I also don’t like faithless men.* Demonica teaches Spitemorta how to develop her powers and together they become the two most dangerous Sorceresses.

[Francene Stanley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm afraid I couldn't get into this plot. Perhaps the abundance of back-story and the myriad of character names, all difficult to pronounce or relate to, turned me off. I'm sure the authors put a lot of time and effort into creating the complicated story and unusual characters, so well done with that. Other people may enjoy the novel. But for me, this isn't a book I'd recommend.

[Jason Hubbard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's my YouTube review:

https://youtu.be/AbRtx885Qow

[[ J o ]]

Read the first book in the Heart of the Staff series, Good Sister, Bad Sister. 1 Star, therefore will not continue series.