Author: Amanda Hocking
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
Errata:
Page 11 “As we spoke, Mina pet the rabbit absently.” should be “As we spoke, Mina petted the rabbit absently.” or “As we spoke, Mina would pet the rabbit absently.”
Page 16 “…but we didn’t know where there were…” should be “…but we didn’t know where they were…”
Page 26 “…on the lowers shelves…” should be “…on the lower shelves…”
Page 104 “King Mikko refuses to undo his father changes…” should be “King Mikko refuses to undo his father’s changes…”
It was reading about Amanda Hocking’s experience that first got me into self-publishing. Of course I never for a moment expected (nor did I get!) the same success she has had, but when I began reviewing, I always thought it would be fun to review one of her books. My problem was that I never found one that I actually wanted to read until this one – and it’s in first person PoV! 1PoV is the voice I detest most for a variety of reasons, but it's not possible to find YA novels with a principal female character that isn't 1Pov these days. So anyway, there’s another strike against this novel. Given that the author tends to write romance disguised as fantasy, I was not confident I would even find this one to my liking, but I thought I’d give it a try. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t impressed.
Ice Kissed is book 2 in the Kanin Chronicles, consisting of Frostfire (which has to be one of the most over-used book titles ever!), Ice Kissed (a title which has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the novel), and Crystal Kingdom. Note that I haven’t read book one in this series since it’s one more into which I came ‘in progress’ without realizing it was an ongoing series.
I think from this point onwards I’m going to simply assume that any YA book in which I may take an interest is part of an ongoing series because quite evidently no one in the entire YA world, it seems, can write a one-off any more. I’m not a fan of series because it’s just a lazy way to milk money from readers by expending no more effort than it takes to regurgitate essentially the same thing over and over (with a twist or two - if we’re lucky - to try to disguise the cookie-cutter marks). Either that or it involves merely padding a novel that should occupy one volume so that it stretches to two or three. I’m not into that.
In a story which seems to have been heavily painted with a Scandinavian brush, complete with snow (because without snow it would be neither complete nor Scandinavian, right?!) Bryn Aven is a “tracker”. I assume that this is explained in book one. I also assume it means just what it says – that she’s some sort of detective. It’s actually rather astounding, I find, how often ‘tracker’ is an actual occupation in fantasy fiction.
In book one Bryn had gone off searching for a missing queen and returned empty-handed. Why it was her job to find a queen missing from another country, I don't know. During that escapade, she and her tracking companion, Ridley, had become ‘romantically’ involved, so the first thing the writer of a trilogy has to do in book two is tear them apart. Here it’s done quite ham-fistedly by having Bryn keep something to herself – something she revealed only when questioned by the king. This allows Ridley to have a childish hissy-fit and treat Bryn like dirt so that she has to suck up to him like a whipped puppy because that’s Ya lot in life for female characters.
I have to say that my favorite character name is Bent Stum, which sounds like some sort of physical infirmity – and painful, too! Bryn hangs out with two girls named Tilda and Ember, both of whom behave as though they’re fifteen. Tilda has been impregnated by a fellow tracker and they’re planning on marrying. Bryn and Ridley are sleeping together and he’s her superior, which is completely inappropriate, yet neither of them think there’s any problem with this. So much for discipline in the ranks!
I have to say the writing quality left something to be desired – notably a good editor. I found several items of wrong word use or poor grammar, but to be fair, these were sometimes leavened by refreshingly correct constructs such as in the opening two sentences in chapter eighteen, where we read: “…took Kasper and me down…when Ridley and I had been…” But then we get odd sentences like “all kinds of books ranging from items of years to the latest novel…”. I don’t know what “items of years” means! Classics? Old tomes? Crappy looking?
In chapter thirty, we get this totally weird sentence; “The darkness of the water outside my window made it impossible to see if the sun had come up yet.” I have no idea whatsoever what that means; was she sleeping under water? In this novel that might be possible! Even if she meant something simple, like that the water wasn’t reflecting the sun yet, then surely the actual sky would give something away? Even if it was cloudy, the sky is routinely lighter in the daytime than at night (trust me on this), so the sentence was nonsensical. On page 170 we read this oddity: “Ilsa…opened the door with a quick knock…” which is actually intelligible, but awkward at best. Maybe the door wasn’t latched and sprung open when she knocked?!
By the time I was a third of the way through this novel, I had pretty much lost interest in it and began skimming rather than doing over-much detailed reading. The writing really isn’t very good, and by that I mean it’s nothing special: it’s not thrilling, it’s not particularly easy on the ears, and it really doesn’t grab the reader. It’s frankly a bit tedious.
On top of that, not a single one of the characters captured my interest, much less my imagination. There was no attempt at character building. Maybe that all got done in book one? There was nothing going on except for Bryn and some guy (Kasper, Ridley) traveling to one place or another, and back again. Bryn was never allowed out on her own (more on this anon), yet she’s supposed to be a strong female character. Pshaw! More interestingly, there never was another female accompanying her, so there was no female bonding notwithstanding her two friends and their wedding plans.
Bryn discovers Queen Linnea’s location through a psychic message which the queen sends her. They deliver her straight back to the very place from which she’d fled in fear of her safety. This made no sense. Bryn and Kasper are sent to guard her despite the kingdom having its own guards. How insulting is that? Bryn kills a guy who is apparently about to kill the king and the latter is arrested for treason – because he’s apparently plotting all of this himself (and faking the attempt on his life)! This is set in completely modern times in our own world (with SUVs and cell phones), yet the assassin uses a sword? It makes no sense.
Now for a bit more on how female characters are treated here. We’re told that the Queen has no say in her husband’s arrest because the two societies are patriarchal, with the laws applicable equally regardless of rank or position. No queen can rule of her own right, yet in this same society, they have female trackers and female officers How come there’s ‘emancipation’ in the military, but none in the nobility?! ? It makes no sense.
This diminution, if not infantilization, of females in this novel is further highlighted in an incident where Bryn is called to see the king, and Ridley protectively jumps up and tries to argue that he should go instead, since he’s her superior. But the fact is that the king summoned Bryn, no one else. Ridley’s behavior here is not only once again inappropriate (and insulting to the king!), it’s completely demeaning – like Bryn is no better than a weak child who needs protecting.
After the wedding, Bryn tries to talk to Ridley, and finds herself tongue-tied. This is supposedly a militarily trained tracker, supposedly a strong woman, who supposedly can act independently, and she’s completely lost for what to do? I don’t get why female authors, particularly those who write YA, so consistently and effectively neuter their main female characters like this. This is why I don’t read romance (not much anyway) and tend to find it distasteful when I do read it. Once in a while a worthy one comes along (which is why I read it once in a while!), but in general, it’s dreadful. What it says about women in how they're portrayed is unacceptable, but what really bothers me what it says about the readership these novels attract.
So why is Bryn summoned? We’re supposed to believe the Prince Kennet – now “acting king” came all the way from his own kingdom, leaving it at a time of trouble and uncertainty, to flirt with Bryn. Seriously? It was at this point that I really had had more than enough of this novel, but I read on to the end, which was, if you pay any attention at all to how the purported “villain” Konstantin is written about throughout this novel, entirely predictable, so no surprises there.
I cannot in good faith recommend a novel as lifeless and devoid of entertainment as this on is. For the passive misogyny alone I’d have to rate it negatively. I guess there’s a market for it if a publisher feels it can can offer a new author some two million dollars for four books, but no matter how inexplicably lucrative it might be for an author, I couldn’t write this stuff, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.
