132,583
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchHeart of Dread: Frozen by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston (view source)
Revision as of 14:07, 9 October 2020
, 14:07, 9 October 2020no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Heart of Dread: Frozen
|author=Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston
|date=October 2014
|isbn=1408334666
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>1408334666</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=<amazonus>B00MUWOHFU</amazonus>1408334666|videoaznus=B00MUWOHFU
}}
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 anyone 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 a 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]]. Older teens might enjoy [[Martin Martin's On The Other Side by Mark Wernham]]. You might enjoy [[Take Back the Skies by Lucy Saxon]] but we had our reservations about that book too.
{{amazontext|amazon=1408334666}}
