In the first book of the Snow-Walker Trilogy, Catherine Fisher basically retells Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen in a Viking fantasy world. (But no, if you’re a rabid fan of Frozen you will not necessarily like this book, even if both stories are based off the same source material.)
The kingdom has been taken over by Gudrun, an evil sorceress of unknown origin, with white hair and icy eyes. Cousins Jessa and Thorkil are brought to the queen’s stronghold in order to sentence them to banishment. Why she doesn’t kill them, or has to bring them to be banished by her in person, I don’t know. Anyway, she banishes them not just into the wilderness, but to an abandoned castle where the queen’s own son (rumored to be a monster) has been held captive for over a dozen years.
I feel I should warn that the next plot point is a spoiler, but really I wasn’t surprised: the son is not a monster, he’s a good guy.
If an evil queen banishes her own son, this is because the son is a threat to her. It turns out the son, Kari, is the reflection of his mother: he looks like her and has the same magical abilities, but where she is megalomaniacal he is constantly serving others…a gift that becomes almost a deus ex machina throughout the rest of the series. (Have a problem? Kari can fix it!)
Fisher tells the majority of the story from the perspective of Jessa, who is supposedly a spunky Viking warrior-maiden. I say “supposedly” because although it is her perspective, little is revealed of her innermost thoughts and feelings. Unlike most protagonists, she isn’t instrumental to the climax of the story.
The Snow-Walker’s Son was a good enough beginning to the trilogy, though I felt that in trying to touch upon all the key characters and plot points of Andersen’s story, Fisher missed some opportunities to flesh out the characters and plot line and make this story more her own.
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