Kiss of Frost

Kiss of Frost is the newest release in the Mythos series, following Touch of Frost and Halloween Frost, a short story. At Mythos Academy, teen warriors - the descendants of ancient warriors, such as Spartans, Valkyries, Amazons and more - train to take up their roles protecting humankind from the God Loki and his followers the Reapers. With her snarky, self-deprecating voice and strange gift of psychometry - the ability to know an object's history just by touching it - Gwen Frost is the unlikely heroine in this series. She is an outsider both to the students of the Academy and the rest of the world. And she now has the Goddess of Victory, Nike’s own sword to protect her after being named Nike’s Champion at the end of Touch of Frost.

So what makes a champion? How do you fight when you are clumsy, untrained and just learning your magical ability? Kiss of Frost picks up the story line with Gwen trying to answer those very questions as winter is setting in and the fall semester is coming to a close. This chill seems to have settled into the heart of our heroine, Gwen. The first book had left off with the hope of a developing relationship with Logan and finding new insight into her magical gifts thus setting the stage for a nice opening for this book. Unfortunately, all hopes for a budding romance and understanding of her magic seams to evade Gwen. Her tutoring with the young Spartan who happens to be her constant savior, Logan, is not getting her any closer to either being a warrior or his girl friend. And her magic, well it is a mystery. But she was named Nike’s Champion and she still wants to impress Logan. So she trudges on. Her newly found friends, Daphne and Carson, and her sword Vic help guide her through providing excellent support and charm to the story.

The first quarter of the book allows the reader to meet more characters and provides a summary of the previous events from Touch of Frost. Allowing the reader to regain details of the school environment, student relationships and the in’s and out’s of this Mythical world. The subsequent dangers that Gwen faces from her victory in Touch of Frost are recapped and begin to immerge. This book could be read without having read the previous two since Ms. Estep does a nice job of recounting the important details from the previous book. However, Touch of Frost and Halloween Frost are definitely worth reading. The students eventually leave for a nice weekend snow retreat and the Touch of Frost history lesson concludes. Once the students reach the snow retreat the story line picks up and gets back into a more captivating rhythm of potential love and a more involved plot to kill Gwen begins to emerge. At the retreat the reader learns that Mythos is not the only school of it’s kind and that in fact is one of many involved in educating the teen warriors. This introduction of this larger mythical world quickly deepens the potential for the overall series plot lines. The villain of the story is both shocking and makes for an intriguing twist. Overall, this story is worth 4 chocolate strawberries. The first bit was slow due to the back history lesson but overall the characters were witty and interesting. The change of location was very refreshing and made for a new fun adventure full of laughter and budding possibilities.

Christy