The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey

        

The Snow Queen
(Five Hundred Kingdoms #4)
by Mercedes Lackey

Summary from Goodreads:

"Aleksia, Queen of the Northern Lights, is mysterious, beautiful and widely known to have a heart of ice. But when she's falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, she realizes there's an impostor out there far more heartless than she could ever be.

And when a young warrior disappears, Aleksia's powers are needed as never before.

Now, on a journey through a realm of perpetual winter, it will take all her skills, a mother's faith and a little magic to face down an enemy more formidable than any she has ever known…."

Rating:

Ever since I read the Fairy Godmother, the first book of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, it became my goal to read all of these books. As of today, the only books I haven’t read are One Good Knight, Harvest Moon which is a novella and the upcoming 6^th book, Beauty and the Werewolf.

So with that in mind, I feel like this series is a little inconsistent. I enjoyed reading The Fairy Godmother, Fortune’s Fool was even better but Sleeping Beauty wasn’t much of a standout. And I’ve read reviews that One Good Knight was not so appealing, which I hope isn’t true. And now for The Snow Queen, I’m really sad to say that I did not enjoy.

I really like the way Mercedes Lackey created her stories from the well-known fairytales we’ve loved when we were kids. In fact, The Snow Queen was the first of the series that I wanted to read. I think it was a good thing that I came upon a copy of the Fairy Godmother first before this book; else I wouldn’t have such a strong urge to read the rest.

I think the characters and the setting were excessively narrated. Too much information really isn’t so good. I was already happy with what I know of the Ice Fairy and the other protagonists but was it really necessary to go over so much detail that really didn’t give much help on what they needed to accomplish?

You know the one thing that really bothered me? This isn’t very much a spoiler, I promise. There’s this part that described a character performed shape shifting. Now I’m all good with the idea but I really don’t think the hunting for prey and feeding off of them needed to be described occupying almost half of a chapter… twice!

Okay, yes, with Lackey’s style of writing, I should’ve expected long narratives but this was just a little too much. Adding that there was not even any romance going on. Sure they have love interests but no sweet scenes or whatever. It was more on the planning and journey side that wasn’t as eventful as I expected.

I don’t question the author’s creativity, and I know she’s an amazing fantasy writer but I guess this book just wasn’t one that I’m in favor of.