Author: Stuart Hill
ISBN: 0-439-68626-1
Words: 136,500
Basically, in The Cry of the Icemark the thirteen-year-old princess Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield has to fight back the forces of the Polypontian Empire to defend her home. And there are a lot of different battles to be fought and potential allies to be courted, such as werewolves, the vampire king, some giant leopards, the Holly King and the Oak King.
The publisher of this book writes in the introduction, “When I got the manuscript I knew it was the best ‘movie’ I had ever read!” And that’s kind of an interesting way to look of it, because when I read it back in 2005, it seemed, in a way, like some other form of media in disguise. Although my initial feeling was to compare it to a game (like, Blizzard’s Warcraft universe or something).
I think that having a fierce young princess for a main character has been done too much, and unless you can do it better than others have, it’s usually a bad idea. And there’s so much action and so many action scenes that it starts to seem a bit repetitive after a while. But – I don’t know, there are a hundred things I could say are wrong with it, but I did have fun reading it and it’s at least written a lot better than Eragon. I particularly liked the world that the book was set in; it wasn’t really different from your traditional fantasy setting in any perceivable way, but it was done well.
And, okay, I really like description of settings and there was plenty of that here. It’s actually sort of overwritten and pretentious in places (like, “The air was freezing cold, and tiny particles of ice drifted and shimmered in the brilliant sunlight so that they seemed to be journeying through a world of polished crystal.”) but… I still like it.