Guest Review: Frozen Prospects, Dean Murray

This review is a guest post by the lovely Anya of About The Story! Welcome Anya!

Title: Frozen Prospects (Goodreads)
Author: Dean Murray

Rating: – Really great story, minor flaws

Frozen Prospects by Dean Murray is a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid about a boy in another world orphaned and alone until his latent potential is discovered by a family of magic users called the Guadel; adventure, misfortune, young love and triumph ensue.

I downloaded this for my Kindle app and it’s still free on Kindle! So you really have no excuse not to go grab it right now, run run run! I dislike reading things on my phone, so it took me a while to finish this book, but I really enjoyed the story once I got used to the format in which I was reading it, and now I have to decide whether I’m going to spring for the next one!

Pages: ~180 pages

Genre-ish: Sci-fi/Fantasy Hybrid

Setting: Frozen Prospects is set on a planet different from our own where women are born with varying levels of magic powers. One of those powers is to go inside the mind of a male that trusts them (usually husband or student) and augment that male’s physical power magically. Only some boys are able to control their minds enough to allow this, however, creating an elite class of wise and powerful magic users called the Guadel.

Premise: Va’del is both an orphan and born of a lowlander mother (which is apparent from his skin color) and because of this hasn’t had the easiest childhood. The village he lives in is controlled by a jerk of a Headman, who doesn’t respect the visiting Guadel when they come to look for boys and girls with potential to join the magic using class. Fortunately for Va’del though, he is inspected and shows startling potential. Unfortunately for him, it isn’t a good time to be a Guadel in their land….

Strengths:

• Really great characters, both the main character Va’del and all of the secondary characters, I really loved and connected with them all (including the pack animals Hungry and Sleepy 😀 )
• Great character development; Va’del transitions nicely from a scared orphan to a boy coming into his own, and no spoilers, but there is some awesome, and heartwarming, secondary character development as well!
• Really interesting magic system; both the augmentation and healing powers of the Guadel, and they keep time with color spheres! How cool is that?
• Moving and motivating plot; I cared a lot about what was happening and what was going to happen, and really want to know what happens next!

Weaknesses:

• This book has a lot of typos that could have been caught with a good editor; for me they weren’t going to break the book, but if you are sensitive to those slip ups, this could be frustrating.
• Similarly, there were sentences that just didn’t flow that again could have easily been fixed by an editor, though, again, I found it easy to accept that fact and move on to focus on the story 😉
• The middle is rather depressing, as in “oh God, no hope, why should I continue” depressing. 🙁 But it gets better!!
• The main character and secondary character (Jain) are both rather young, and that shows at times through annoying and childish reactions.

Summary:
Several typos and jerky sentences are to be expected from a free Kindle version of a book and shouldn’t deter you from downloading Frozen Prospects right now and squeeing with me over its awesomeness! A really cool concept combined with some awesome characters makes for a great read for any sci-fi/fantasy hybrid lover like me!

I found this book completely randomly, has anyone else read it? I need teammates on the Team Va’del!

–Anya

Similar Stories Reviewed:

Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini – Another boy who loses his family only to find his hidden power
Mistborn by Brandson Sanderson – Spectacular Sci-Fi/Fantasy hybrid