“She’s in trouble – of the mythic kind. When Lilly White finds a strange box, it changes her life. It ignites the ice that has always lain dormant in her heart. Oh, and it brings her to the attention of him.
And who is he? The god of revenge. He drags her into his world. A world of magic, of crime, of retribution.
She’ll never escape him. And soon she’ll realize she doesn’t want to….”
Some say the best things in life aren’t free and usually, I’d beg to differ, but after DNF’ing the Frozen Witch by Odette Bell I’m left questioning my stance. It’s the kind of book that comes without a price tag but leaves you disappointed enough to demand a refund because of how horrible it was.
It pains me to have to write this negative review but I would’ve probably ripped this book to shreds had I been reading it on paperback instead of the kindle. The Frozen Witch, from what I gather, is essentially about a girl who didn’t know she was a witch until she came across a strange little box. In discovering her magical powers she ends up angering the gods and sought to barter her services to the God of revenge in exchange for her life.
Let me just take a moment to mention some of the things I actually liked about this book.
I don’t have much of an appreciation for covers with actual people on them but this one had a beautiful concept and a pretty colour scheme. It was initially what had sold me on the book. Moral of the story? Never judge a book by its cover.
I like this solely because with 151 pages it means readers won’t have to suffer through 300+ pages of literary abuse. Of course, there are still four more books in the series but until I hate myself enough to reach for them, you can miss me with it.
Well, that about sums it up.
I disliked pretty much everything else about The Frozen Witch, especially the writing. I DNF’ed this book at 25% and had about 15 highlighted passages with “WTF” as a notation. I haven’t read any other books by the author to know if this mess is her signature style of writing. If it is then I’ll never pick up another novel by her again, free or not. hippo
At times I felt she was trying to say too much all at once and ended up not making much sense. This was especially the case when she wrote in the third person. While it is my preferred point of view to read from, this book did such horrible injustice to it that I found myself favouring the scenes told in the first person.
I can forgive awkward use of language, terrible pacing, misused metaphor and all the other literary felonies committed in this book when it’s written from the perspective of the character, just not the damn author.
Here’s an example of her trying to say too much and not making much sense:
The room was dark, gloomy, a musty scent filling the air. Running along with it was the sharp smell of fresh blood.
Hank walked forward, hands in his pockets. He tipped his head down and nodded at the box on the plinth. “Tell me we finally found it?”
A man stood behind the plinth in a long, dark robe that touched the dust-covered floor. The robe was completely black except for red accents of perpetually fresh blood rimming its sleeves and collar. The blood dripped along the fabric until it splashed onto the floor.
Right away you should be able to discern that some shady exchange is taking place. But if you’ve been reading for as long as I have, or even longer and did not cringe at least once while reading that then I’m side-eyeing you. Or maybe not.
I don’t know if I’m just being picky but that “Running along with it was the sharp smell of fresh blood” line read awkwardly to me. One simply does not describe a scent as “running” without at least establishing it as some kind of extended metaphor.
Secondly what kind of gymnastics with the English language would lead someone to describe blood as “perpetually fresh” instead of just saying the man was bleeding? Blood stains are especially difficult to spot on black clothing so how in the hell are red accents on the man’s black robe being seen in a damn room described as dark. And wasn’t it already stated at the beginning of the scene that the blood in the room was fresh, why was it necessary to describe it as such again?
That brings me to another thing that bothered me throughout the first quarter of the book. It was how frequently and quickly words/expression were being reused. Redundancies plagued the narrative. I swore to myself that if I had to read that pain or any other feeling “ran up/down” Lily’s back one more time I would gouge my eyeballs out.
There were too many repetitions. Things like:
“Larry untucked something from under his arm. Whatever it was, it had been hastily crammed underneath Larry’s jacket. Larry never took his jacket off at gigs like this. It could be sweltering, the air con could be broken, but Larry always wore his suit and tail.”
The entire paragraph was obviously about Larry, readers don’t need to read his name in every damn line of it. We’re not pre-schoolers!
“In her books, I was worse than a murderer, because I had talent. I was intelligent, and under my frumpy hair and baggy eyes, I was almost pretty. But I never did anything with my potential. I wasted it. Squandered it. As she’d once told me to my face, in her books, ignoring your abilities was as bad as killing a man.“
Was it really necessary to repeat “in her books” when it was clear that what was being said was the opinion of the grandmother? Didn’t Lily already state that because she wasted her talent her nana thought it made her “worse than a murderer”? Then why say it was “as bad as killing a man” at the end? Did the definition of murder suddenly change?
No, it didn’t, all of this is redundant.
Reading should never feel like a chore and this book was exactly that. I really wanted to see it through to the end but I just couldn’t. The writing was bad which made what could’ve potentially been a great read a rather exhausting one. The scenes were hard to visualize either because they lacked description or were described using the same English gymnastics I’d mentioned before.
I didn’t get far enough to have much of an opinion on the characters but I did like Lily’s brief moments of morbid humour. However, with Franklin Saunders and all his “unreal” beauty thrown into the mix, I can only imagine myself dragging this book even further through the mud if there’s some cliché romantic subplot.
Overall Rating: No stars
Get a free copy of the book on Amazon and see if it’s the series for you: https://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Witch-Book-One-ebook/dp/B01LPMKNF8
Image courtesy of: Odette C Bell, Good Reads, and The Odyssey Online
Don’t let this review scare you, it’s very rare that I DNF a book. If you’ve written one or is currently working on it and need detailed feedback or just a second opinion? Hit ya girl up, that’s what I’m here for
