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Revision as of 10:03, 28 August 2014
, 10:03, 28 August 2014Created page with "{{infobox |title=Heart of Dread: Frozen |sort= |author=Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston |reviewer=Jill Murphy |genre=Teens |summary=Great premise with a post-climate di..."
{{infobox
|title=Heart of Dread: Frozen
|sort=
|author=Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
|genre=Teens
|summary=Great premise with a post-climate disaster setting and combining elements of paranormal and dystopian genres. Plus, of course, some romance. I enjoyed it but would say I hoped the interesting setting would deliver something a little more original and a little more focused.
|rating=3
|buy=No
|borrow=Yes
|pages=368
|publisher=Orchard
|website=http://www.melissa-delacruz.com/
|date=October 2014
|isbn=1408334666
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408334666</amazonuk>
|amazonus=<amazonus>B00MUWOHFU</amazonus>
|video=
}}
Earth has frozen over. Climate change has come home to roost and war has decimated the human population. Dragging out a mean existence as a blackjack dealer in the casinos of New Vegas, Nat is also hiding a secret. She is ''marked'' and the marked are hunted by the authorities. Like many, Nat has heard of a place called the Blue, where the sun still shines and grass can grow. She'd give anything to find it and the voice in her head is telling her that she ''must'' find it.
Her only chance is to throw in her lot with a rag tag bunch of junior mercenaries led by a charismatic and good-looking boy called Ryan Wesson. But Wes has secrets of his own...
I really wanted to love ''Frozen''. A journey in search of a verdant promised land through a frozen post-apocalyptic world and an ocean littered - literally - with trashbergs: that's a great premise, right? And if ''Frozen'' had focused on this, I'm sure I would have loved it. But everything was so confused. Johnston and de la Cruz have thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this story - it's dystopian, it's paranormal, it's romantic, it's fantastical. I'm all for a bit of genre-busting but you really do have to be coherent about it. What is the central plank of ''Frozen''? Is it the voice in Nat's head? Is it the journey to the Blue? Is it the love story? Is it any one of half a dozen things? There's an attempt to bring all the book's threads together in the last couple of chapters but everything is so muddled by then that it lacks impact and the denouement is far from satisfying. Unhappily, this lack of focus also seeps into the prose, which is littered with run-on sentences and general wordiness.
Um... on the plus side, the romance between Nat and Wes is handled well. It's a sweet story of two damaged, standoffish kids learning to trust and entirely credible. And there are some great ideas - in particular, I loved the descriptions of the mutant sylphs and the idea of a cold, cold world in which heat credits are hard to come by.
Even so, I think you would need to be die-hard fan of combining the dystopian and fantasy genres to enjoy ''Frozen''. It's a great premise but it falls down on execution. Sorry.
If you like stories set in and around the sea ''and'' a dystopian premise, try [[Dark Life by Kat Falls]].
{{amazontext|amazon=1408334666}}
{{commenthead}}
[[Category:Paranormal Fiction]]
[[Category:Dystopian Fiction]]
|title=Heart of Dread: Frozen
|sort=
|author=Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
|genre=Teens
|summary=Great premise with a post-climate disaster setting and combining elements of paranormal and dystopian genres. Plus, of course, some romance. I enjoyed it but would say I hoped the interesting setting would deliver something a little more original and a little more focused.
|rating=3
|buy=No
|borrow=Yes
|pages=368
|publisher=Orchard
|website=http://www.melissa-delacruz.com/
|date=October 2014
|isbn=1408334666
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408334666</amazonuk>
|amazonus=<amazonus>B00MUWOHFU</amazonus>
|video=
}}
Earth has frozen over. Climate change has come home to roost and war has decimated the human population. Dragging out a mean existence as a blackjack dealer in the casinos of New Vegas, Nat is also hiding a secret. She is ''marked'' and the marked are hunted by the authorities. Like many, Nat has heard of a place called the Blue, where the sun still shines and grass can grow. She'd give anything to find it and the voice in her head is telling her that she ''must'' find it.
Her only chance is to throw in her lot with a rag tag bunch of junior mercenaries led by a charismatic and good-looking boy called Ryan Wesson. But Wes has secrets of his own...
I really wanted to love ''Frozen''. A journey in search of a verdant promised land through a frozen post-apocalyptic world and an ocean littered - literally - with trashbergs: that's a great premise, right? And if ''Frozen'' had focused on this, I'm sure I would have loved it. But everything was so confused. Johnston and de la Cruz have thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this story - it's dystopian, it's paranormal, it's romantic, it's fantastical. I'm all for a bit of genre-busting but you really do have to be coherent about it. What is the central plank of ''Frozen''? Is it the voice in Nat's head? Is it the journey to the Blue? Is it the love story? Is it any one of half a dozen things? There's an attempt to bring all the book's threads together in the last couple of chapters but everything is so muddled by then that it lacks impact and the denouement is far from satisfying. Unhappily, this lack of focus also seeps into the prose, which is littered with run-on sentences and general wordiness.
Um... on the plus side, the romance between Nat and Wes is handled well. It's a sweet story of two damaged, standoffish kids learning to trust and entirely credible. And there are some great ideas - in particular, I loved the descriptions of the mutant sylphs and the idea of a cold, cold world in which heat credits are hard to come by.
Even so, I think you would need to be die-hard fan of combining the dystopian and fantasy genres to enjoy ''Frozen''. It's a great premise but it falls down on execution. Sorry.
If you like stories set in and around the sea ''and'' a dystopian premise, try [[Dark Life by Kat Falls]].
{{amazontext|amazon=1408334666}}
{{commenthead}}
[[Category:Paranormal Fiction]]
[[Category:Dystopian Fiction]]
