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Thaw #2
Winter Queen
A slightly pampered girl allows her avoidance behavior to isolate her from the world... and it's only when she takes the final step that she realizes the wall she's built in the name of safety is also the one that will hold her prisoner forever... unless she discovers how to destroy it.
The only one who can break a neurosis... is the one who has it.
Combining elements from the Snow Maiden, Schneekind, Snegurochka tales with those of the Snow Queen; Winter Queen continues a new series: THAW.
"... an utterly lovely sequel..." U.S. reviewer Shantelle Mary
Praise for previous works:
"...[E. Kaiser Writes] created a world that is easy to visualize, and people you'd like to spend time with. When you finish reading this novel you'll be left wanting more." Canadian reviewer Kathryn Svendson
"...[E. Kaiser Writes] has created a heroine worthy to stand alongside such relatable and spirited female protagonists as Miri from "Princess Academy" and Alanna from "The Song of the Lioness" series." British author Melika Dannese Lux
The only one who can break a neurosis... is the one who has it.
Combining elements from the Snow Maiden, Schneekind, Snegurochka tales with those of the Snow Queen; Winter Queen continues a new series: THAW.
"... an utterly lovely sequel..." U.S. reviewer Shantelle Mary
Praise for previous works:
"...[E. Kaiser Writes] created a world that is easy to visualize, and people you'd like to spend time with. When you finish reading this novel you'll be left wanting more." Canadian reviewer Kathryn Svendson
"...[E. Kaiser Writes] has created a heroine worthy to stand alongside such relatable and spirited female protagonists as Miri from "Princess Academy" and Alanna from "The Song of the Lioness" series." British author Melika Dannese Lux
- GenresFantasy
379 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 6, 2015
38 people want to read
About the author
E. Kaiser Writes
20 books94 followersE. Kaiser Writes was born into a family of readers, and got started on storytelling around the age of four when her older siblings prompted her into recounting an absolutely ridiculous account of a parallel childhood. It was good for the family's general entertainment, and she discovered the thrill of making people laugh.
At the age of seven her mother read the Hobbit aloud, and a fascination with beautiful fantasy was born. At nine she came to the decision that she wanted to be a writer, and set to reading rabidly to learn the art. At thirteen she attempted her first novel, and it was eaten in a computer's demise.
Afterward, during her teenage years she tried very hard at various times to stop writing all together.
Not succeeding, she at last gave in to her addiction, and wrote "for fun".
Her first novel, Jeweler's Apprentice, is a light-fantasy adventure for teens. The shy, bookish heroine is thrust out on the first step toward the adventure that awaits, and growing up. More books in this series are expected.
At the age of seven her mother read the Hobbit aloud, and a fascination with beautiful fantasy was born. At nine she came to the decision that she wanted to be a writer, and set to reading rabidly to learn the art. At thirteen she attempted her first novel, and it was eaten in a computer's demise.
Afterward, during her teenage years she tried very hard at various times to stop writing all together.
Not succeeding, she at last gave in to her addiction, and wrote "for fun".
Her first novel, Jeweler's Apprentice, is a light-fantasy adventure for teens. The shy, bookish heroine is thrust out on the first step toward the adventure that awaits, and growing up. More books in this series are expected.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 16, 2016
Winter Queen was an utterly lovely sequel to Winter’s Child, the first book in E. Kaiser Writes’s Thaw series. I suppose I just connected with the characters as they grew or something, because while I enjoyed the first book, the second captured my heart! :)
Ilise is about to become queen of Noran. But she has spent most of her life believing lies about herself, and hiding from others and… herself. She’s hardly ready. Of course, bubbly and slightly irresponsible Princess Girthild, doesn’t understand her sister’s distress, and is quite busy thinking about handsome young men and such.
Both cold queen and reckless princess are unprepared for the adventures that lay out rather ominously before them. An Earl’s devious plans bring Ilise’s secrets to light, and following the harrowing events that quickly ensue, it seems that all might be lost…
But let’s not forget the mysterious woodsman, a pair of loveable reindeer, the winter angel, and a craggy king of old. Help is on the way. But sometimes, one has to realize that they are not fighting the evils of the world… but rather themselves.
By the end of this book, I was sighing in delight. How wonderful. I loved this rendition of Snow Queen, or from my perspective, the movie Frozen! :) Such memorable characters. Such deep allegories. I was fascinated by the points and lessons that E. Kaiser Writers brought across. Great truths. Children and adults alike can benefit from Winter Queen’s thoughtful tale.
Halvor… definitely loved him! And the reindeer were fun. Yes, and Tompe, I liked him too. Kai!! Oh, he’s perfect. (Besides his scary stories, tsk, tsk!) I don’t know why, but he touched my heart. So, so sweet. A dear young man for sure.
Hess!! I knew this was coming, but I wasn’t quite ready for the depth of—! Read Winter Queen, and you’ll understand!
There were some intense moments, making this novel perhaps for a little more of a mature audience than Winter’s Child. Just exercise a bit of caution when it comes to the young ones.
So yes. A pleasing, thought-provoking, yet ultimately adorable fairytale. It was great to journey along with Ilise and Girta and watch their stories unfold. I loved the end!! :) So sweet. You must give the Thaw series a try, all fairytale lovers!
I received a copy of Winter Queen from the author in exchange for my honest review.
Ilise is about to become queen of Noran. But she has spent most of her life believing lies about herself, and hiding from others and… herself. She’s hardly ready. Of course, bubbly and slightly irresponsible Princess Girthild, doesn’t understand her sister’s distress, and is quite busy thinking about handsome young men and such.
Both cold queen and reckless princess are unprepared for the adventures that lay out rather ominously before them. An Earl’s devious plans bring Ilise’s secrets to light, and following the harrowing events that quickly ensue, it seems that all might be lost…
But let’s not forget the mysterious woodsman, a pair of loveable reindeer, the winter angel, and a craggy king of old. Help is on the way. But sometimes, one has to realize that they are not fighting the evils of the world… but rather themselves.
By the end of this book, I was sighing in delight. How wonderful. I loved this rendition of Snow Queen, or from my perspective, the movie Frozen! :) Such memorable characters. Such deep allegories. I was fascinated by the points and lessons that E. Kaiser Writers brought across. Great truths. Children and adults alike can benefit from Winter Queen’s thoughtful tale.
Halvor… definitely loved him! And the reindeer were fun. Yes, and Tompe, I liked him too. Kai!! Oh, he’s perfect. (Besides his scary stories, tsk, tsk!) I don’t know why, but he touched my heart. So, so sweet. A dear young man for sure.
Hess!! I knew this was coming, but I wasn’t quite ready for the depth of—! Read Winter Queen, and you’ll understand!
There were some intense moments, making this novel perhaps for a little more of a mature audience than Winter’s Child. Just exercise a bit of caution when it comes to the young ones.
So yes. A pleasing, thought-provoking, yet ultimately adorable fairytale. It was great to journey along with Ilise and Girta and watch their stories unfold. I loved the end!! :) So sweet. You must give the Thaw series a try, all fairytale lovers!
I received a copy of Winter Queen from the author in exchange for my honest review.
January 20, 2015
Author's Note:
I’d wanted to write a Winter Queen piece for some time, but was galvanized into action by all the things Disney's version, Frozen, did wrong. It was just wrenching to see how many themes and deep meanings were just SKIPPED by Disney. There was so, so much that could have, SHOULD have been done… and once I get mad at someone doing a story wrong, it can be like rocket fuel to my own version ; ). I include summaries of the source tales at the beginnings of the Thaw: books, educating readers on the original tales to prime them for my versions. : )
We do borrow elements from the Disney version, (it is a universal truth that as soon as Disney does something that becomes America’s version of the tale!) Some of the ideas were too cute to toss, one of them being the family with 13 princes. Having recently met a family with 8 kids under the age of ten, and hearing of the derogatory remarks their mother receives, that opportunity to contrast Noran’s two-daughter family with Demargen’s 13-son one was too good to pass up.
And the potential for marvelous spin-offs are irresistible! : )
All those Princes!!! (I feel a little like Lydia and Kitty Bennet in P&P, except they got excited over anything in "regimentals"...) But there are a slew of lovely fairy-tales that are coming up, some flipped nearly beyond recognition, some only slightly tweaked, the Beaded Slipper, Twelve Dark Knights (12 Dancing Princesses; gender-swapped,) Runzella, etc.
If you're someone who hates any kind of spoiler in your books, don't read beyond this point! :-)
If you like a little back-story and to find out where the author's mind was coming from, then carry on my wayward son! (Or daughter... as the case may be.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You will see that we divided many of the roles from the original Snow Queen, splintering them off to make a fuller, more rounded cast; and preserve the faint threads of logic that dictate actions and reactions.
Angels and prayer feature distinctly in Anderson’s work. This was an element not generally seen in fairytales, so it intrigued us. The themes of divine intervention came into play in the form of ultimate good, that those in anguish can cry to the Almighty and be heard.
So the Winter Angel became a player in the script, entering softly and reluctantly on the borders of mortal chaos, but putting a firm hand on the tiller when a particular course needed serious correction. Her abilities go far beyond this tale, but her presence is a visual link to the One Who knows all, the Great Composer whom our heroines learn to heed.
Young Queen Ilise is, in effect, the Snow Queen, for she is the one who bears a royal title, but she is not the source of the ice power. Nor is she the one who kissed Kai and made him forget. Nor did she take him away from the life he was fast ruining and give him another, a stasis life as a holding pattern until he could be found by the girl who would bring him back to his village, his people, and his true role in life.
Ilise and the Winter Angel are matching images of a character that is bigger and more complicated than one life could suffice.
Princess Girta is the girl with spirit and determination, who chases after the one who is lost. She is the girl who hangs over the edge of a building and who shares roses with everyone, an emblem of the love she wishes so deeply to receive. She is the girl who at first blush seems to fall in love at first sight… and she will encounter crooks, reindeer, and a friendless girl in her initial adventure. But first blush is rarely what it seems, and the tapestry of life is more complicated than that.
Kai is the lost boy, the outcast, the one who no one would notice if he disappeared. But he already has disappeared, and instead of being his home, Noran takes the place of Anderson’s icy lake, a place where Kai completes a repetitive task until he can be found; but he is more than that… for even in our times of waiting, we can be exactly where the Master wants us for a role that He intends.
The princess and the prince are here, too; but shifted and altered into different roles.
One princess does not stay that way, but doubles and becomes two… altering aspects from both Gerda and the Snow Queen; making both Girthild and Ilise a combination of characters from the tale, as well as unique individuals in their own right.
Girta does take the prince’s mode of conveyance, and is robbed of it, but his story—and the conveyance’s—does not end there.
And then there is the Devil’s Mirror. We have developed further on that theme, rendering a potion powder nicknamed “The Devil’s Mirror” which induces a condition known as the Burning Greed. Since greed can be argued to be the root of all evil—putting the self before all else—the potion has this effect on its victim.
Have you ever seen a young man with everything, but one character flaw renders him so unsuitable for life that few like him? And what sweeter host for an ambitious puppeteer than someone already poised in a position of power?
In the end, greed can only lead to the death—whether emotional, spiritual, or actually physical—of the person it has its claws in; so too the Burning Greed generally cannot be cured, but only fought throughout the victim’s life. Is that not how we must combat the faults our natural selves carry, also? Temper or avarice, envy or spite, these things may never truly die in our hearts; we must always stand guard against their wicked little tongues.
In the end, Hess is luckier than we; but then being a fairytale, his condition is worse than ours as well. (less)
I’d wanted to write a Winter Queen piece for some time, but was galvanized into action by all the things Disney's version, Frozen, did wrong. It was just wrenching to see how many themes and deep meanings were just SKIPPED by Disney. There was so, so much that could have, SHOULD have been done… and once I get mad at someone doing a story wrong, it can be like rocket fuel to my own version ; ). I include summaries of the source tales at the beginnings of the Thaw: books, educating readers on the original tales to prime them for my versions. : )
We do borrow elements from the Disney version, (it is a universal truth that as soon as Disney does something that becomes America’s version of the tale!) Some of the ideas were too cute to toss, one of them being the family with 13 princes. Having recently met a family with 8 kids under the age of ten, and hearing of the derogatory remarks their mother receives, that opportunity to contrast Noran’s two-daughter family with Demargen’s 13-son one was too good to pass up.
And the potential for marvelous spin-offs are irresistible! : )
All those Princes!!! (I feel a little like Lydia and Kitty Bennet in P&P, except they got excited over anything in "regimentals"...) But there are a slew of lovely fairy-tales that are coming up, some flipped nearly beyond recognition, some only slightly tweaked, the Beaded Slipper, Twelve Dark Knights (12 Dancing Princesses; gender-swapped,) Runzella, etc.
If you're someone who hates any kind of spoiler in your books, don't read beyond this point! :-)
If you like a little back-story and to find out where the author's mind was coming from, then carry on my wayward son! (Or daughter... as the case may be.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You will see that we divided many of the roles from the original Snow Queen, splintering them off to make a fuller, more rounded cast; and preserve the faint threads of logic that dictate actions and reactions.
Angels and prayer feature distinctly in Anderson’s work. This was an element not generally seen in fairytales, so it intrigued us. The themes of divine intervention came into play in the form of ultimate good, that those in anguish can cry to the Almighty and be heard.
So the Winter Angel became a player in the script, entering softly and reluctantly on the borders of mortal chaos, but putting a firm hand on the tiller when a particular course needed serious correction. Her abilities go far beyond this tale, but her presence is a visual link to the One Who knows all, the Great Composer whom our heroines learn to heed.
Young Queen Ilise is, in effect, the Snow Queen, for she is the one who bears a royal title, but she is not the source of the ice power. Nor is she the one who kissed Kai and made him forget. Nor did she take him away from the life he was fast ruining and give him another, a stasis life as a holding pattern until he could be found by the girl who would bring him back to his village, his people, and his true role in life.
Ilise and the Winter Angel are matching images of a character that is bigger and more complicated than one life could suffice.
Princess Girta is the girl with spirit and determination, who chases after the one who is lost. She is the girl who hangs over the edge of a building and who shares roses with everyone, an emblem of the love she wishes so deeply to receive. She is the girl who at first blush seems to fall in love at first sight… and she will encounter crooks, reindeer, and a friendless girl in her initial adventure. But first blush is rarely what it seems, and the tapestry of life is more complicated than that.
Kai is the lost boy, the outcast, the one who no one would notice if he disappeared. But he already has disappeared, and instead of being his home, Noran takes the place of Anderson’s icy lake, a place where Kai completes a repetitive task until he can be found; but he is more than that… for even in our times of waiting, we can be exactly where the Master wants us for a role that He intends.
The princess and the prince are here, too; but shifted and altered into different roles.
One princess does not stay that way, but doubles and becomes two… altering aspects from both Gerda and the Snow Queen; making both Girthild and Ilise a combination of characters from the tale, as well as unique individuals in their own right.
Girta does take the prince’s mode of conveyance, and is robbed of it, but his story—and the conveyance’s—does not end there.
And then there is the Devil’s Mirror. We have developed further on that theme, rendering a potion powder nicknamed “The Devil’s Mirror” which induces a condition known as the Burning Greed. Since greed can be argued to be the root of all evil—putting the self before all else—the potion has this effect on its victim.
Have you ever seen a young man with everything, but one character flaw renders him so unsuitable for life that few like him? And what sweeter host for an ambitious puppeteer than someone already poised in a position of power?
In the end, greed can only lead to the death—whether emotional, spiritual, or actually physical—of the person it has its claws in; so too the Burning Greed generally cannot be cured, but only fought throughout the victim’s life. Is that not how we must combat the faults our natural selves carry, also? Temper or avarice, envy or spite, these things may never truly die in our hearts; we must always stand guard against their wicked little tongues.
In the end, Hess is luckier than we; but then being a fairytale, his condition is worse than ours as well. (less)
January 14, 2016
This was a great book. The depth of the story and themes alone would make this worth reading.
Hess was a very strong point of this story. The depth of his character and the purity of his actions are refreshing and realistic. I liked Hess - how he was not turned into a villainous rogue simply because stories need one. The plot was actually much more interesting as is - not to mention that his character is actually lovable. I would never have thought that I would root for Hess and Girta at all - but I am. And I hope Girta can truly forgive him. Ilise has a much better opportunity to see Hess' true colors and extend mercy than Girta does. Girta doesn't have that chance.
The origins of Halvor, involving the Winter Angel, were intriguing. His purpose in life, given by her, and his resulting loyalty, added a lot to the story.
The Ice Guard was a clever plot point! Not to give away spoilers, but I appreciated his role towards the end - it was a powerful picture. Furthermore, the whole learn-to-melt quest provided realism and depth to the plot as well.
Overall, well-written. I would recommend this even just for the depth woven into this story - love, forgiveness, trust, truth, and restoration.
Hess was a very strong point of this story. The depth of his character and the purity of his actions are refreshing and realistic. I liked Hess - how he was not turned into a villainous rogue simply because stories need one. The plot was actually much more interesting as is - not to mention that his character is actually lovable. I would never have thought that I would root for Hess and Girta at all - but I am. And I hope Girta can truly forgive him. Ilise has a much better opportunity to see Hess' true colors and extend mercy than Girta does. Girta doesn't have that chance.
The origins of Halvor, involving the Winter Angel, were intriguing. His purpose in life, given by her, and his resulting loyalty, added a lot to the story.
The Ice Guard was a clever plot point! Not to give away spoilers, but I appreciated his role towards the end - it was a powerful picture. Furthermore, the whole learn-to-melt quest provided realism and depth to the plot as well.
Overall, well-written. I would recommend this even just for the depth woven into this story - love, forgiveness, trust, truth, and restoration.
August 31, 2015
Winter Queen is an extremely cool book.
With heat-freezing action, characters that will just melt your heart, and a story that kept me frozen to my chair. I got literal chills at multiple points in this awesome and cold as ice-cream novel.
(…You're sick of my ice puns aren't you? Oh well. I try.)
The writing, the land, and the story is beautiful. There are a few interesting twists, and a lot of snow. It also has GORGEOUS black-and-white illustrations drawn by the author that are SUPERB.
Now I'm going to talk about some of these cool characters. (No I won't give up that word.)
Ilise: She's cold. No kidding. Inside and out, she is COLD. If her hands don't freeze you her cold demeanor will. Despite this I always cared about her and wanted things to work out.
Girta: She's happy. I like happy, but not that happy. She had a lot of problems at the beginning of the story, but as she grew, she grew on me. By the end I absolutely LOVED her.
Hess: He's . . . complicated. And so is my relationship with him. When he first really appeared in Winter's Child, he was a little boy who, well, was so stiff and trying to be so grown up I just could not like him. I mean, I felt sorry for him, I didn't dislike him, I just couldn't LIKE him. When he first appeared in Winter Queen I couldn't figure him out. He seemed kind of empty, and besides being handsome and charming, seemed to have no character. This soon changed however and before I knew it I loved him to bits! ...Then it got complicated again.
Kai. KAI. KAI!!!! All hands down about two hundred feet, he is my favorite character in this book. Quiet, sometimes grumpy, blond, sweet, reindeer-owning, still-lost-memory, short woodsman KAI. He's just a hero. He's perfect. He's awesome. And in this book he's grown into an older teen! Which makes him more cool. Kai is why you need to read this right now.
Confession: There are a few parts that were so much like Frozen I sort of winced. But these were very very few, and despite those parts this story really is its own.
So if you like snow, awesome guys, reindeer, a good fairytale with a moral, and just pure fun, this book is for you.
(But seriously Kai is about 97-degrees-below-zero cool. So just read it because he's totally awesome.)
With heat-freezing action, characters that will just melt your heart, and a story that kept me frozen to my chair. I got literal chills at multiple points in this awesome and cold as ice-cream novel.
(…You're sick of my ice puns aren't you? Oh well. I try.)
The writing, the land, and the story is beautiful. There are a few interesting twists, and a lot of snow. It also has GORGEOUS black-and-white illustrations drawn by the author that are SUPERB.
Now I'm going to talk about some of these cool characters. (No I won't give up that word.)
Ilise: She's cold. No kidding. Inside and out, she is COLD. If her hands don't freeze you her cold demeanor will. Despite this I always cared about her and wanted things to work out.
Girta: She's happy. I like happy, but not that happy. She had a lot of problems at the beginning of the story, but as she grew, she grew on me. By the end I absolutely LOVED her.
Hess: He's . . . complicated. And so is my relationship with him. When he first really appeared in Winter's Child, he was a little boy who, well, was so stiff and trying to be so grown up I just could not like him. I mean, I felt sorry for him, I didn't dislike him, I just couldn't LIKE him. When he first appeared in Winter Queen I couldn't figure him out. He seemed kind of empty, and besides being handsome and charming, seemed to have no character. This soon changed however and before I knew it I loved him to bits! ...Then it got complicated again.
Kai. KAI. KAI!!!! All hands down about two hundred feet, he is my favorite character in this book. Quiet, sometimes grumpy, blond, sweet, reindeer-owning, still-lost-memory, short woodsman KAI. He's just a hero. He's perfect. He's awesome. And in this book he's grown into an older teen! Which makes him more cool. Kai is why you need to read this right now.
Confession: There are a few parts that were so much like Frozen I sort of winced. But these were very very few, and despite those parts this story really is its own.
So if you like snow, awesome guys, reindeer, a good fairytale with a moral, and just pure fun, this book is for you.
(But seriously Kai is about 97-degrees-below-zero cool. So just read it because he's totally awesome.)
February 7, 2017
Thaw: Winter Queen is the second book in the Thaw Series by E Kaiser Writes. It continues Ilise and Girta’s story and shows many of the consequences of the bad decisions and neglect that occurred in Winter’s Child. The story focuses on “The Snow Queen” fairytale and has a plotline very similar to that of Frozen, once again.
I was much more impressed with Winter Queen than I had been with Winter’s Child. Although Winter Queen is even more similar to Frozen than the first, it showed insights into the characters that a short movie was not able to portray. It also followed “The Snow Queen” fairytale more closely, including a House of Roses and highlighting on the struggles Hess undertook as well as Ilise, Girta, and Kai.
I was impressed with the wisdom of the Winter Angel and the struggles Ilise undertook to undo the damage Ilise had done to herself and her country. It was certainly a struggle for Ilise, especially since well-meaning Girta did not know how to listen to Ilise’s instructions. Both girls faced the consequences of their decisions, but they succeeded and gave the reader a good role model to follow.
Another character I liked was Hess. Yes, he was the villain prince, but he was so dashing and helpful and loving at the beginning. Even though he made mistakes at the end, it almost seemed as though it was not his fault and that, some day, Hess might change back to the kind young man he was in the beginning.
Overall, Winter Queen was a lovely book I would recommend to fans of Frozen. I look forward to reading the third book in the series.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I was much more impressed with Winter Queen than I had been with Winter’s Child. Although Winter Queen is even more similar to Frozen than the first, it showed insights into the characters that a short movie was not able to portray. It also followed “The Snow Queen” fairytale more closely, including a House of Roses and highlighting on the struggles Hess undertook as well as Ilise, Girta, and Kai.
I was impressed with the wisdom of the Winter Angel and the struggles Ilise undertook to undo the damage Ilise had done to herself and her country. It was certainly a struggle for Ilise, especially since well-meaning Girta did not know how to listen to Ilise’s instructions. Both girls faced the consequences of their decisions, but they succeeded and gave the reader a good role model to follow.
Another character I liked was Hess. Yes, he was the villain prince, but he was so dashing and helpful and loving at the beginning. Even though he made mistakes at the end, it almost seemed as though it was not his fault and that, some day, Hess might change back to the kind young man he was in the beginning.
Overall, Winter Queen was a lovely book I would recommend to fans of Frozen. I look forward to reading the third book in the series.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
February 7, 2015
Winter Queen continues the Frozen/"The Snow Queen"/"The Snow Baby" retelling begun in Winter's Child. It picks up the story as the king and queen of Noran are departing on a sea voyage, and if you have any knowledge at all of Frozen, you can probably guess what happens next. I like how the author mixed aspects of the classic "The Snow Queen" in with parts of the modern Frozen and then added her own twist to both.
I'm happy to say that most of my major issues with Winter's Child are pretty much resolved in Winter Queen. The story flowed very well, and I definitely feel like I got to know the characters. I particularly liked Hess; the author handled him and his development well. Ilise and her gradual "thaw" was also fairly well done, though not quite as smooth as Hess's developement.
Unfortunately, like Winter's Child, Winter Queen would have been a bit better if the author had run it by an editor/proofreader one more time before publication. Again, it might just be my copy, but the book had just enough errors to bother me.
Overall, Winter Queen is a nice retelling of both an old and a new fairytale and a definite improvement over the first book in the series. If you enjoyed Frozen, you'll probably like this book as well.
I'm happy to say that most of my major issues with Winter's Child are pretty much resolved in Winter Queen. The story flowed very well, and I definitely feel like I got to know the characters. I particularly liked Hess; the author handled him and his development well. Ilise and her gradual "thaw" was also fairly well done, though not quite as smooth as Hess's developement.
Unfortunately, like Winter's Child, Winter Queen would have been a bit better if the author had run it by an editor/proofreader one more time before publication. Again, it might just be my copy, but the book had just enough errors to bother me.
Overall, Winter Queen is a nice retelling of both an old and a new fairytale and a definite improvement over the first book in the series. If you enjoyed Frozen, you'll probably like this book as well.
January 5, 2016
In the second installment of E. Kaiser Writes' Thaw series, Winter Queen, the story picks up where it left off in Winter's Child. Ilise and Girta are orphaned when their parents are lost at sea. Then the story jumps ahead seven years to the coronation of Queen Ilise. Hess (whom we were introduced to in the first book), a prince of Noran's neighbor Demargen, arrives as an ambassador to witness the coronation and meets Girta. Both are young and naïve and fancy themselves in love, and their announcement frightens Ilise into showing her curse to the world. She flees in embarrassment, creating a domino effect that ends with Hess attempting to murder her and being sent home to Demargen in chains.
As with the first book of the series, Winter Queen is also chock full of great lessons, such as how one simple choice, naively made, can create a ripple effect that touches more shores than you could have ever imagined. The Stone King (he is definitely my favorite character in the series) again gives a wonderful lesson, this time in the importance of controlling your emotions. Again, I could easily picture parents using this story as away to open discussions that could have lasting impacts on their children and would recommend it.
As with the first book of the series, Winter Queen is also chock full of great lessons, such as how one simple choice, naively made, can create a ripple effect that touches more shores than you could have ever imagined. The Stone King (he is definitely my favorite character in the series) again gives a wonderful lesson, this time in the importance of controlling your emotions. Again, I could easily picture parents using this story as away to open discussions that could have lasting impacts on their children and would recommend it.
February 7, 2015
Thaw is a series that combines several wintry fairy tales to tell the story of two sisters: Princess Ilise, the older sister with ice powers, and Princess Girta who is stubborn and wild. In Winter Queen, Ilise becomes queen, but her powers drive a wedge between herself, her sister, her kingdom, and the world.
The plot may sound familiar to fans of Disney's Frozen, and it is in fact very similar. When I first started reading the series, I was unsure how I felt about its extreme similarity to Frozen. However, I do love that movie, and I soon found these books drawing me in with their unique perspective on the story. In Winter Queen, I felt like the characters' feelings, motives, and emotions were displayed quite well, and I could not stop reading until I reached their happy ending. However there is still more to learn about these characters beyond the fairy tale ending, so I am glad there are more books in the series that can continue to follow the sisters as well as Prince Hess and Kai.
So, if you are a fan of Frozen and of fairy tales, then I would recommend this book.
The plot may sound familiar to fans of Disney's Frozen, and it is in fact very similar. When I first started reading the series, I was unsure how I felt about its extreme similarity to Frozen. However, I do love that movie, and I soon found these books drawing me in with their unique perspective on the story. In Winter Queen, I felt like the characters' feelings, motives, and emotions were displayed quite well, and I could not stop reading until I reached their happy ending. However there is still more to learn about these characters beyond the fairy tale ending, so I am glad there are more books in the series that can continue to follow the sisters as well as Prince Hess and Kai.
So, if you are a fan of Frozen and of fairy tales, then I would recommend this book.
February 21, 2015
Winter's Queen is a continuation of the Frozen-like series Thaw. I had been hoping for a little more story here than I might have expected with its Frozen plot line but was disappointed in that aspect. This is a cute book and a great read aloud for young children, especially fans of Frozen.
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