A review by cyndin
The Age of Ice by J.M. Sidorova
2.0
Maybe 2.5 stars. It started off interesting. A Russian queen forces a nobleman to marry a jester and spend their wedding night in a palace of ice. The jester then gives birth to twins, one of whom has a strange fascination and connection with ice (hence the fantasy element).
Had the author, writing her first novel, focused the story on a few years in the life of the "ice man," it would have been a good book. She could have done sequels later on. Instead, she does a sweep of 200 years of Russian (and some other) history. What should have been the entire book: background, young adulthood, and a fateful trip to the Arctic, becomes just the first third of it. After that it gets tedious.
I wanted to abandon the book several times, and did end up skimming much of the last third. There are good bits in the last 2/3 of the book though and those kept me reading to the end.
Had the author, writing her first novel, focused the story on a few years in the life of the "ice man," it would have been a good book. She could have done sequels later on. Instead, she does a sweep of 200 years of Russian (and some other) history. What should have been the entire book: background, young adulthood, and a fateful trip to the Arctic, becomes just the first third of it. After that it gets tedious.
I wanted to abandon the book several times, and did end up skimming much of the last third. There are good bits in the last 2/3 of the book though and those kept me reading to the end.