“Beasts of the Frozen Sun"
Jill Criswell
When we take the Green Isle, we will show them what a warrior is – a man made of ice and steel.
Man made of ice and steel. That is exactly what Criswell gives readers when she describes the Dragonmen, warriors from the faraway Iseneld, who have come to claim Glasnith for their own wicked agenda. They are fearsome and frightening soldiers lead by the Savage known as Draki, who claims to be half-human, half-god. Draki is out to steal not only the island of Glasnith, but also our heroine Lira of Stone, who is one of the Daughters of Aillira, a girl gifted by the gods. There is only one person who can help Lira defeat Draki, an Iseneld ‘beast’ named Reyker.
Lira and Reyker have a history. Years before our story starts, Lira was captured by the Dragonmen and taken hostage. Reyker, seeing Lira bound for torture at the hand of Draki, puts his own life in jeopardy and cuts her bonds to free her. He marks her with a skolar, a shield scar that will help protect her, and pushes her into the water so she can escape. Years later, he arrives back on Glasnith as the survivor of a shipwreck and Lira is the one to find him and nurse him back to health, even though she knows he is the enemy and doesn’t trust him. They must work together if either of them are going to survive the Dragonmen.
Magic and fantasy weave through Celtic and Norse history to create a beautiful story of the struggle of a people who are trying to protect themselves from invasion and oppression. Criswell builds a wonderful land for the people of her novel, using her words simply but elegantly, with just the right amount of description and none of the extraneous adjectives that readers’ eyes would glaze over.
My only criticism would be that the beginning of the novel took a smidgeon too long to get to the heart of the story. I could have used a little more action in the first 100 pages to get things moving, and there was one too many capture/escape scenes for my buy in. Hopefully because this is the author’s first novel and she’s building a world for a trilogy, these are some kinks that will be worked through in Book 1 so 2 and 3 can thrive. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next installment, which should be published by Blackstone Publishing in 2020. 4 out of 5 stars from me. #LandRforever.
