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‘Touch of Frost’ by Jennifer Estep
Mythos Academy # 1
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Synopsis:
My name is Gwen Frost, and I go to Mythos Academy; a school of myths, magic and warrior whiz kids, where even the lowliest geek knows how to chop off somebody’s head with a sword and Logan Quinn, the hottest Spartan guy in school, also happens to be the deadliest. But lately, things have been weird, even for Mythos. First, mean girl Jasmine Ashton was murdered in the Library of Antiquities. Then, someone stole the Bowl of Tears, a magical artifact that can be used to bring about the second Chaos War. You know, death, destruction and lots of other bad, bad things. Freaky stuff like this goes on all the time at Mythos, but I’m determined to find out who killed Jasmine and why; especially since I should have been the one who died…
(Source: Goodreads.com)
My thoughts about the book:
What should I say about this book? First of all I’ve to say, that I don’t understand, why so many readers entitle this book as a ‘masterpiece’, or rate it with 5 points?!
Okay, I don’t want to be unfair, the book was quite nice and I could read it very quick because of the easy writing style, but well, it wasn’t really special for me – rather a box full of cliché and without much inventiveness.
Am I now too hard with the book? Maybe a little, because nevertheless I still rated it with 3 points (EDIT: after writing this review I had to reduce it to 2.5 points), which means it’s actually an average book. But now if I think back to it, I’ve to confess that there were a few things in it which have exceptionally disturbed me.
I want to start with the very childish language and go on with the naive, babyish, intolerant main protagonist Gwen. (I just had to look up her name, which I do almost never, so you can see, how much I’ve liked this character or how she got stucked in my memory – ‘almost‘ not at all.)
It begins in the middle of the plot in the Mythos Academy on which Gwen goes recently, and here now it is constantly written, over pages and pages, how attractive and special everybody here are, how swanky, vain and rich and that this school, which is lead like an élite university, as well as the students themselves show off everything.
Of course Gwen isn’t rich, doesn’t come from a snobbish family (*surprise*) and stands totally above those things. It’s only funny, that their wealth and money it’s mentioned in every chapter …
Well, apart from that fact, the plot with the murder cases in the Academy is interesting at first, but the twist and the ways which lead to the end and present the ‘real’ culprit, however were very unimaginative or better said predictable. I don’t know why, but the more I think about it, the more does this book upset me, because I can’t understand, that everybody find it so great?!
For me it seems that Estep has just goggled a little bit, easily put up a quite normal ‘snob’s school’, and added a poor, small girl and a few mythological aspects, which even weren’t used originally, but simply in such a way, as well as every other could come up with.
A white building with ivy here, a few statues of gods there, some swords and weapons over there … and violà – everybody is excited and praise the book! Unfortunately I don’t.
What adds to that is this is arcane, dark, strong, mysterious … *bla bla bla* guy, who can break all girl’s hearts, was even already in the bed with 90% of these snob’s schoolgirls– but of course he falls for the little, naive, dumpy-dressed Gwen. Oh, how cute! Or rather not authentic?
I don’t know how someone can find that so great again. First of all something like that was in books already the 2.000 times! And secondly, the guy isn’t actually nice and with such a reputation, I wouldn’t want at all, that he gets interests in me, regardless how hot he may look. Please, there have to be less superficiality in a book, or at least a guy who isn’t completely ugly, but with humor, intellect and a good heart, who doesn’t only want to have sex but also other things?