I recently finished reading Shadow Frost by Coco Ma. Thank you Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for providing me with an Advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. It was really good… for a book that was written when the author was fifteen years old. While I enjoyed it overall, it wasn’t on the same level as a lot of my favorite books are.
The concept of this book is great. Asterin is a princess with a bit of fiestiness to her. When it’s discovered that a demon is running rampant through the kingdom, she volunteers to go, along with her best friend and four other guards. While out there, they discover that someone is trying to kill them. Asterin is a fairly powerful magic user and excellent swordswoman.
The biggest problem I had with this book was believability. Yes, I realize this is a fantasy book, so obviously you have to suspend reality on a bunch of things, but there are still universal elements we share in the human condition.
When Asterin’s mother, the queen, provides her with guards from another country, Asterin doesn’t seem to be suspicious. At all. I certainly would be. I did a foreign exchange with the Australian Navy once, but I certainly wasn’t guarding the Prime Minister’s daughter. Who lets new guards from a far-away country guard the princess? Furthermore, one of the guards decided to call the princess “brat” almost from the beginning. I think it’s meant to be witty banter, but could you imagine a foreign guard coming to protect Prince William when he was 17 or so and having the guard call him “brat” to his face? I can’t.
The love relationships didn’t seem believable either. The characters seemed to be sending mixed signals to each other. Is there a love triangle developing? Are they jealous of each other? Does she like him? Wait, what, he likes him? The characters that were supposed to be into each other didn’t seem to have a lot of chemistry between each other at the start. I couldn’t believe the depth of love that the characters were supposed to have for each other so quickly either. I’m not an opponent of instalove or insta-infatuation, but I just didn’t feel it here.
In Shadow Frost, a group of adventurers travel to attack the bad guy. It reminded me a bit of the Dragonlance books in that respect (which I loved). The plot had a bit of mystery to it, although I felt the author revealed some things a bit too early. The book had some plot twists, and I wasn’t sure who was who until we were almost at the end.
Overall, Shadow Frost was a solid debut for a teenage author. I didn’t dislike the book, but I’m not going to include it among my favorites either. I’m not sure if I will continue reading this series (so many books, so little time), but I would consider reading more books by Coco Ma in the future.