Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Pages: 376
Release date: February 10, 2017
[Goodreads]
Okay, so here’s the thing, I started Frostblood right after I finished Empire of Storms. Empire of Storms was absolutely incredible. In my opinion, it was one of the best books in the Throne of Glass series. So when I began Frostblood I was already riding high on sizzling romance and shocking twists. I was an emotional tornado.
Pages: 376
Release date: February 10, 2017
[Goodreads]
Okay, so here’s the thing, I started Frostblood right after I finished Empire of Storms. Empire of Storms was absolutely incredible. In my opinion, it was one of the best books in the Throne of Glass series. So when I began Frostblood I was already riding high on sizzling romance and shocking twists. I was an emotional tornado.
While reading Frostblood, I couldn’t stop comparing it to Empire of Storms. Because... BOTH series has a main female character who 1. wields fire 2. is part of a prophecy 3. life is interrupted many times by a god who has a plan for her. ALSO in both book series there’s a slow budding romance between the main character and a secondary character. The relationships both begin with verbal and physical sparring. Now I'm not trying to say that Frostblood is a rip or anything, there is just A LOT of similarities and I feel like I scrutinized Frostblood because of how fresh Empire of Storms was in my mind.
Don't get me wrong, there is still a lot of differences between the two series. For instance, the whole frostblood vs. fireblood thing is definitely different. There's only 3 types of magic wielders in the Frostblood world (at least as far as we know). The gods at play are connected to the directions/different winds. Nor of the North is the father of frostbloods, Sud of the South is the mother of firebloods, there's also Cirrus of East who seems to be the most reasonable and benevolent of the bunch. Then there is Eurus of the West who is very dark, tricky and dangerous.
The current king, and frostblood sitting on the ice throne is malevolent. He has no interest in creating peace between the frostbloods and firebloods, instead he imprisons or outright kills firebloods. Some firebloods also end up in a tournament against warrior frostbloods that fight and kill firebloods for sport.
Frostblood’s writing style is basic in the sense that it relies mostly on dialogue with very few descriptions of characters, their positioning, physical looks including facial expressions, and mental processes. I had a hard time picturing what each character looked like, what each character was doing and what Ruby was thinking in every scene. It's a shame because I liked Ruby, she was sassy and motivated to survive. She also had a lot of compassion, even for those that she considered enemies.
After the ending of Frostblood I’m not sure if I will read the second book. The whole end “fight scene” was brief and underdeveloped. I skimmed through the last 30 pages.
I was all around let down by Frostblood. It had one-of-a-kind gods and a great rivalry between firebloods and frostbloods. Unfortunately neither story line was fully fleshed out and utilized. The characters melded into the background because there wasn’t enough descriptions.
I’m giving Frostblood 2 instead of 1 stake because even with it’s pitfalls I found some enjoyment while reading. This book was a quick read because of the lack of descriptions so I flew through it. It cleansed my palate after reading Empire of Storms and made me ready for the next (hopefully) great read.
