This is in the most part an engaging and exciting story. One man against many is always an appealing concept in literature and film alike.

This is set when bears were still dwelling in Britain, and a bear family play a crucial part in this action novel.

The main character Tagart is a bit of a John Rambo type – quiet but dangerous. I was rooting for him all the way through, which shows off the author’s skills at creating strong characters that readers can sympathise with. All characters have merit of one sort or another.

The plot revolves around Tagart wanting revenge on a village containing over 100 people after a group of them massacre his nomadic tribe.

About halfway through, we have a complete shift in momentum. This is necessary for the overall story, but I admit to being disappointed by the sudden change. Tagart’s inventive plans to take down individuals or groups of villagers was enticing, and I felt it was a shame this was put on hold for so long.

Not that the change of location is bad. It is, in fact, clever plotting that adds depth to the overall story, plus it creates a much more dangerous threat to Tagart come the story’s ending when he faces a power far greater than the combined forces of the villagers.

The dialogue exchanges are good, and I like that the language is contemporary. I’m not a fan of archaic language in historical novels, as it slows the narrative pace down with its unnatural feel to the modern reader. None of that goes on here.

It’s a pity dialogue exchanges aren’t more frequent. At times, the narrative gets too bogged down with detail. A lot of this detail is superfluous and should’ve been reduced or cut altogether.

Detail for detail’s sake is never a good thing. It’s as though the author wanted to convey as much of his research as possible. This doesn’t makes for good reading, and it’s for this reason I’ve rated ‘The Stone Arrow’ four stars, not five. Lists of items in a room, or types of food in a forest, are boring. Such static description written at length is prose at its most passive.

On the most part, though, this is a fine novel. I’ll certainly read the next book in the trilogy. ( )

This book was an exhilarating ride, to say the least. It was smartly paced, almost entirely action-driven, and so brutal in spots that I think it would have to be trimmed somewhat to qualify as a rated "R" film. And, incidentally, "this could be made into a very good movie" is what I found myself thinking over and over again. If Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear and Crichton's Eaters of the Dead were able to make the transition from (speculative) historical fiction to successful films, this book probably could.

The book immediately plunges the reader, as do so many of Herley's books, into the day-to-day world of people in another time and place. His skills at research and description allow him to do this more convincingly and more immersively than most writers, and his natural knack for pacing and self-editing allows him to do so without allowing the essential storyline to bog down. He's clearly a author in love with story and place, rather than with his own language.

While The Stone Arrow was a fast, exciting read, it doesn't quite stand up to the quality of Herley's later works, such as The Penal Colony, Refuge, or the incomparable The Tide Mill. That's because The Stone Arrow shows only some of Herley's many strengths: while his amazing vocabulary, powers of research, economy of words, and manifest love of nature are on full display here, his ability to sweep the reader through the full spectrum of human emotion is not, nor is his delightfully bone-dry sense of humor. While the book is nominally written from a third person omniscient perspective, the narrative eye spends relatively little time inside the characters' heads, preferring instead to focus on action and setting, showing how the characters must be thinking and feeling through their deeds.

Those observations are not necessarily fault-finding - this book strikes me as the work of a talented twenty-something writer out to make a big first impression, and that it certainly does! As it is, I'm now excited to sit down to The Flint Lord and The Earth Goddess, the two remaining books in this trilogy. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in pre-historic fiction, anyone who has read and enjoyed any of Herley's later works, or anyone who just wants to sit down and read a ripping tale of honor, vengeance, and ingenuity, with a Rambo-level body count. ( )