meganbmoore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
meganbmoore) wrote2009-11-10 05:52 pm
meganbmoore) wrote2009-11-10 05:52 pm
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Ice by Sarah Beth Durst
When she was a child, Cassie’s grandmother told her a fairy tale about how the North Wind’s daughter was promised to the Polar Bear King as his bride, but fell in love with a normal man instead. The Polar Bear King, not wanting an unwilling bride, agreed to hide her and her lover from the North Wind if she would promise her daughter to him as a bride. Eventually, though, the North Wind found his daughter and, angry, blew her as far north as he could, abandoning her in the troll kingdom, where she became a slave.
As she grew up, Cassie realized that the fairy tale was her grandmother’s way of telling her that her mother was dead. Growing up in her father’s arctic research station, Cassie plans to enter the same field, and to get her college credit remotely, but her father changes her plans and insists that she leave with her Grandmother after a strange encounter with a bear. She learns why when the bear actually talks to her, and she learns her grandmother’s story is true, so she makes a bargain with him: she’ll honor her mother’s bargain and become his wife, as long as he rescues her mother from the troll kingdom.
The story is structured (sometimes loosely, sometimes tightly) around “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” with some heavy influence from “The Snow Queen” and “The Polar Bear King,” and bits and pieces from other fables. (I’m trying to remember if the “North Wind’s daughter” story is one I’ve heard before, or if it’s unknown to me/a Durst original. It’s vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.) Cassie is an American-if more nominally than anything else, I think-but the book is largely removed from both that and the European roots of the stories that inspired it, instead primarily focusing on Bear’s northern world, just beyond the edges of reality.
Spoilers:
One aspect that I particularly liked, possibly my favorite aspect (aside from a part of the ending and the fact that Cassie makes the bargain to save the mother she’s never met, knowing that the same mother sold the then-hypothetical Cassie to Bear before she was born) is that, by the time Cassie and Bear are separated and she goes to save him from the Troll Princess, Cassie is pregnant, and so most of the adventure has her dealing with both the northern world and the difficulties of doing so while pregnant.
That said, there is a bit of skeeviness in how Cassie gets pregnant. Cassie knows Bear needs to have children but makes it clear that she doesn’t want any, at least not yet, and is on the pill. Bear has the ability to heal and, knowing that she doesn’t want children yet, fixes the “chemical imbalance” he can sense in her, not realizing that she put it there deliberately. Now, granted, I don’t think he even knows the pill exists, but he did know she didn’t want kids yet. That said, I do believe his sincerity when he says that he thought Cassie was accepting the possibility of children when she had sex with him, and while I don’t think he quite understood why she was so mad at him, I do think he understood that he sees the chemical imbalance again, he should just leave it there, or at least clear the possibility of another kid before doing anything about it. So really, the skeeviness is more there because of similar things in other works than in this particular one.
Then there’s the ending. One thing that’s always bugged me about “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” (love it as I do), and that has similar elements in many fairy tales, is that the Troll Princess is always blindly evil and selfish and deceptive. The trolls here are actually souls who have never had bodies, and one of the themes is that the cause of many stillbirths (in all races, not just humans) is that there are more births than there are souls to share among them, and so the trolls, in addition to no longer being evil, become sympathetic, and a part of the solution. And the Troll Princess becomes the soul of Cassie and Bear’s daughter, largely earning my love forever.
In short: Pretty darn spiffy, despite one niggling plot point.
As she grew up, Cassie realized that the fairy tale was her grandmother’s way of telling her that her mother was dead. Growing up in her father’s arctic research station, Cassie plans to enter the same field, and to get her college credit remotely, but her father changes her plans and insists that she leave with her Grandmother after a strange encounter with a bear. She learns why when the bear actually talks to her, and she learns her grandmother’s story is true, so she makes a bargain with him: she’ll honor her mother’s bargain and become his wife, as long as he rescues her mother from the troll kingdom.
The story is structured (sometimes loosely, sometimes tightly) around “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” with some heavy influence from “The Snow Queen” and “The Polar Bear King,” and bits and pieces from other fables. (I’m trying to remember if the “North Wind’s daughter” story is one I’ve heard before, or if it’s unknown to me/a Durst original. It’s vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.) Cassie is an American-if more nominally than anything else, I think-but the book is largely removed from both that and the European roots of the stories that inspired it, instead primarily focusing on Bear’s northern world, just beyond the edges of reality.
Spoilers:
One aspect that I particularly liked, possibly my favorite aspect (aside from a part of the ending and the fact that Cassie makes the bargain to save the mother she’s never met, knowing that the same mother sold the then-hypothetical Cassie to Bear before she was born) is that, by the time Cassie and Bear are separated and she goes to save him from the Troll Princess, Cassie is pregnant, and so most of the adventure has her dealing with both the northern world and the difficulties of doing so while pregnant.
That said, there is a bit of skeeviness in how Cassie gets pregnant. Cassie knows Bear needs to have children but makes it clear that she doesn’t want any, at least not yet, and is on the pill. Bear has the ability to heal and, knowing that she doesn’t want children yet, fixes the “chemical imbalance” he can sense in her, not realizing that she put it there deliberately. Now, granted, I don’t think he even knows the pill exists, but he did know she didn’t want kids yet. That said, I do believe his sincerity when he says that he thought Cassie was accepting the possibility of children when she had sex with him, and while I don’t think he quite understood why she was so mad at him, I do think he understood that he sees the chemical imbalance again, he should just leave it there, or at least clear the possibility of another kid before doing anything about it. So really, the skeeviness is more there because of similar things in other works than in this particular one.
Then there’s the ending. One thing that’s always bugged me about “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” (love it as I do), and that has similar elements in many fairy tales, is that the Troll Princess is always blindly evil and selfish and deceptive. The trolls here are actually souls who have never had bodies, and one of the themes is that the cause of many stillbirths (in all races, not just humans) is that there are more births than there are souls to share among them, and so the trolls, in addition to no longer being evil, become sympathetic, and a part of the solution. And the Troll Princess becomes the soul of Cassie and Bear’s daughter, largely earning my love forever.
In short: Pretty darn spiffy, despite one niggling plot point.