| I love a good series, but this one didn't make my Top 10 List. Sorry, Mrs. Allen. |
For those of you who read my reviews at The Family Addiction, you know I love a good series. You probably also know I REALLY love a good fantasy series. There's nothing quite like getting to know a group of characters that you can joyfully check in on again and again. (Alas, the Saxon math series, pictured above, didn't quite have the character development I look for in a good series. Maybe there just aren't enough words in word problems for that to happen. ;D)
So imagine my delight, last week, when I discovered the first bok of a a new series already in motion.
Happy dance! I read the first one and then IMMEDIATELY bought the next two so I could have hours of uninterrupted time in the Mythos Academy world.
Bliss.
I will say I was a bit slow to warm up to the Mythos Academy in Touch of Frost . At this school just outside Asheville, North Carolina, 16-22 year old descendants of the famous warrior classes (the Amazons, Valkryies, Spartans, Roman, Celts, Ninjas, and Samurais) study and train together. While the students are legally minors, they're constantly faced with the very adult threat of Loki's return and the evil machinations of his supporters. The basic concept seemed a little to close to Harry Potter for me, but once I got settled into the world I could focus on the story itself instead of constantly making comparisons between the Mythos Academy and Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling didn't invent the "magic kids goes to school together" concept, so it was probably more my own hang up than anything else.
(Let me stop a minute and say, definitely, that the Mythos Academy books are written for an older audience than Harry Potter, so please don't hand these to any 9-year-olds. The main character is 17 and is faced with real-time high-school aged problems. There is discussion of sex, drugs, and alcohol, as well as war, death, and torture, so these are truly meant for a PG-13 crowd.)
 |
| The first of a series The first of a GOOD series! |
The main character in Touch of Frost (and the rest of the series) is Gwen Frost, a Gypsy girl with touch magic. If she touches you or your belongings she can see your emotion-laden past. Gwen only learned of the Mythos Academy after the death of her mother, and she wasn't raised in decadent wealth like the rest of her classmates. She's more comfortable in hoodies than Gucci or Prada. It's safe to say that Gwen has a steep learning curve when it comes to figuring out the world of the Mythos Academy.
Touch of Forst centers around Gwen reluctantly tackling that learning curve while she tries to solve the mystery of the death of a Valkryie that no one seems to mourn. She encounters a really cute, but troubled Spartan boy and an even more troubled Nemean prowler, she might, JUST maybe, have started to make friends, and she puts herself in peril just to figure out what's going on.
I thought Touch of Frost was a great introduction to this series by Jennifer Estep. I devoured the second two (Kiss of Frost and Dark Frost), and I'm looking forward to the fourth (Crimson Frost, which comes out in December). The book has all the elements of a good fantasy series, but set in a world of teenagers and young adults who are struggling to learn about themselves and their boundaries.
(If this review has confused you more than helped you, there is a 99-cent introduction available in e-format, First Frost. It, however, isn't a story on its one--only background information that gets repeated in each of the subsequent tales.)
No comments:
Post a Comment