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A Breath Of Frost (2014)

by Alyxandra Harvey(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

080273443X (ISBN13: 9780802734433)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Walker Childrens

series

The Lovegrove Legacy

review 1: So in theory a book the deals with débutantes who are secretly witches, solving murders in a London that is secretly built up upon magical societies should have been exactly the book for me but man did this book seriously waste a fantastic set up. Firstly the pacing was all over the place, the book throws you right into the action which, usually, is a great thing, however this novel not only places you into the midst of events you have no hope of understanding, it also uses a bunch of nonsensical made up magic terms that make no sense, and hurls about 10 characters at you at once expecting empathy when one of them is hurt, and suitable fear when the villains appear. The stakes at the start are seriously confused, and I was left wondering if perhaps the entire city of Lond... moreon had been cast in this novel names and character quirks were being hurled at me so fast. The central romance, though mercifully not a love triangle (yet anyway this is first in a series so there is time) is still bland. Cormac is written as the traditional charming asshole who is more of an asshole than charming, everyone is also painfully straight, and considering this is the era when Byron was running about shagging anything with a pulse, and that the novel is set up with two gender exclusive schools which are a prime set up for glory, absolutely nothing happens. The one true saving grace of this novel was in fact Theodora's story, which is in fact only briefly mentioned in a few flashbacks but somehow manages to capture not only a more fantastic and celtic atmosphere to the magic that Harvey was clearly trying to create, but also develops a far more moving love story than the on again off again nonsense between Cormac and Emma. The Theodora/Ewan parts reminded me so much of Tam-Lin, as well as contained a true sense of the wild nature of Emma's mother's character, and the truly tragic nature of their romance. I shed a few tears I have to admit when Ewan was banished through the portal and Theodora later transformed herself into a doe to remain in the forest forever, the one true place she was in love and happy. JUST THINKING ABOUT IT NOW MAKES ME SAD. Truly this book doesn't get going till about 1/2 way through, when the cousin's join the finishing school for witches, which is clearly what the plot should have been mostly focused on. It was like A Great and Terrible Beauty meets Harry Potter, although with an unfortunate side helping of Cassandra Clare which I could have done without, although even Clare manages to remember gay people exist so. We're all losers really.
review 2: A Breath of Frost:Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. Recommendation: Yeah, okay, sure. You can read this. Why not? Right. "Magic and witches and secret societies and murder."In an age were corsets are all the rage and women are supposed to be polite and silently fragile. Three cousins, one a lithe tomboy, one a perfectly curvy romantic searching for true-love, and one the belle, the beautiful girl with a sense of self preservation twisted up in love with a guy who is one moment distantly cold and in the next passionately smoldering. All threefold these daughters of earls live content and placid lives in London's sparkling aristocratic neighborhood. And all three discover the same thing, the sort of thing that leaves them remarkably stupefied. They are witches. Descendants of a long line of powerful regal witches. Follow these three young debutants as they attempt to blend their new magic with the duties of a proper lady who's trying to land a landed beau. The Girl: Emma Charlotte Day:"'I don't know your rules enough to break them.' But she was feeling decidedly in favor of learning them for the express purpose of demolishing them. Fear, apparently, made her contrary." (Emma says as she stands before the horrendously unmannered magisters of the Order. Whom, by the way seem to be in the business of torturing witches. Can anyway say Salem.) The gaul on this girl is marvelous. Given what she's been through and the horridness of being raised but a silent stoic father who is mainly absent from her life, I think the girl manages herself extraordinarily well. You know for a "pampered aristocrat".The Intrigue:"It all came crashing back. Witchery.The Order of the Iron Nail. Cormac...She was well and truly a prisoner of madmen." (Emma thinks to herself as she awakes in an albeit somewhat luxurious bedroom after having heard her sentence from the magisters.)The girl barely becomes a witch and wham bam it's off with her head or rather in Emma's case to the river with lead slippers to see if she'll float. The poor girl and her cousins are chased by this secret society that somehow manages to micromanage witches. Then are ridiculously accused of (gasp*) murder. A finishing school, mystery gates to hell that periodically open and slam shut, and deer antlers are thrown into the mix so that by the end of this far-too elongated book (one could argue) I honestly was glad for it to be over. All the twists, turns, pivets, and bloody different p-o-v's was driving me bonkers. It's sort of like the author collapsed a dozen different albeit intertwined stories into one bursting at its seams novel. Personal Opinions:Although I am sorry to say this, I shall: this book has made me realize there is such a thing as a "too long book." And yes I realize that is the most structured sentence in the world it does manage to get the point across well enough. By about page 270 things had taken a turn for the weird, and not the good weird mind you but the unsettling sort of weird that has a girl wondering 'Why?' Furthermore to my dismay the sense of adventure had died away, rather than fizzling like the slow crawl of a falling action normally does, it simply came to an abrupt disconcerting halt and then in a dozen or so pages the adventure like a rocket shooting into the sky would pick up again and form some sort of semi-ridiculous intrigue. less

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