So I’ve now finished Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep and have moved on
to Kiss of Frost (the second book in the series). My feelings about this
series, thus far, can be summed up in one word: conflicted. On the one hand
Touch of Frost reminded me a lot of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Do you remember that one? Harry was such a
winey little turd in that book that I found myself yelling at the pages and
even threw my book into the laundry basket once or twice. So here’s the breakdown
of the story before I go on: Gwen Frost finds herself at a new school, knowing no
one, shortly after her mother dies in a car crash caused by a drunk driver
(though I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not at all what really happened… only time will tell). This is a pretty
basic set up for a very basic story, but, the awesome part of this story is that Gwen is what’s known as a Gypsy.
Not the card reading vagabond type, but she has special powers: when she
touches things she can see and feel everything an object has been through;
whether the object is alive, dead, or inanimate.
This school, in which she knows
no one (and reminds the reader of this ad nauseum ad infinitum), has got to be
the coolest school next to Hogwarts itself. Everyone who goes there is a descendant
from mythological warriors who fought in the Chaos war against a God named
Loki. There were Valkyries, Romans, Spartans, Amazons, ninjas, samurai, and
many, many, many others. This sounds like an amazing premise for a story right?
Except that Gwen herself is utterly loathed to everything around her. She hates that the kids are so snobby and
rich and have every new gadget and the very best top brand name everything, she
hates the food served in the cafeteria (albeit fillet minion pizza does sound really freaking weird, and that’s not
even the strangest example given), and she hates her classes. Though she,
herself, has magic and witnesses the magic the other students poses she still
does not believe in any of it. She sits in her Myth History class and pretty
much ignores everything the teacher is telling her because she simply thinks it’s
stupid and couldn’t possibly be true. I want to scream at her “HELLO! HOW COULD
IT NOT BE TRUE? YOU TOUCH STUFF AND SEE THINGS, YOUR GRANDMA SEES THE FUTURE,
YOUR MOM KNEW WHEN PEOPLE WERE LYING, AND THE KIDS IN THE SCHOOL HAVE SPARKLERS
COMING OUT OF THEIR FINGERTIPS!!!” What’s there not to believe?? I get very
animated when I’m angry at characters.
As the story progresses some even weirder than usual things start
happening to Gwen: she witnesses a girl die in the library where she works.
Something feels wrong to her. One of my biggest pet peeves in a story is a mystery
novel where the mystery is blatantly obvious to everyone but the main character, so when I figured out what was going on long before Gwen did I was slightly
annoyed. Not to mention the fact that most of the dialogue read like bad movie
lines or an adult writer trying to dumb down her characters to make them
believably “teen-like”. I know quite a few teenagers that don’t have to talk
like idiots for it to be obvious that they lack life experience.
Still, with such a cool story premise and a love interest that’s totally
drool worthy, as well as a plethora of interesting characters, this story wasn’t
exactly bad. I couldn’t put my finger
on it; despite my being seriously irritated by Gwen I couldn’t stop reading!
Even at the end of the book I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. The descriptions
were great, the characters were a little predictable but in a way that any avid
reader may find any character (someone always reminds you of someone else you’ve
read after about 100 books), and the dialogue, as movie quotie as it seemed,
was interesting and fit the personalities of the characters. With an amazing
story idea and a lot of room to grow
I found myself immediately buying the second book for my Kindle.
I know! I know! I spent 90% of this blog basically bashing the books. But,
seriously, if you pick one up (and I suggest you do), I think you will find
yourself getting pulled along by the story the same way I was. After all, we got
through Order of the Phoenix didn’t we? This series is just too good of a story arc not to keep
reading and not to suggest it to you all. I will keep you updated as I continue
to finish reading the series. I’m not even going to tell you more about the
books because I just know I’ll accidentally throw in a spoiler, I’ll just tell
you that they are definitely worth
picking up.
I also intend to read her adult novels starting with Her Elemental Assassin
number one: Spider's Bite. If any of you decide you can’t stand the teen angst
and shoot for one of her adult novels and happen to get to this one before me
let me know and you can, if you want, do a guest blog post on the book!
By the way, all of these books have been out for a while, I have a serious problem starting series in the middle. If you don't, though, check out By A Thread, which was just released and has gotten FANTASTIC reviews!
Check out all of Jennifer's books at http://www.jenniferestep.com/
For my readers: Have you ever been conflicted or addicted to a book or series? Which ones and why? Please leave comments!
2 comments:
I read about 15 books into the Carpathian series by Christine Feehan ...and now have stopped. It was carbon copy stories in each one. Some of the beginning ones had different story lines, but it was getting really easy to guess the entire story line so I just stopped getting frustrated and stopped reading it.
Also, if you like to read about multiple pantheons clashing in a book, try the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole and the Lords of the Underworld series by Gena Showalter.
Both are adult paranormal romance.
Awesome! I will add them to my list!
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