Ice by Sarah Beth Durst, review by K. Bird Lincoln
Nice, nice re-telling of a fairytale. But it doesn't start like a fairytale. It starts with the daughter of a research scientist tagging polar bears in the Arctic. All the details of the cold, of the measures people have to take to survive, all of it was very convincing and interesting.
However, the polar bear Cassie tries to tag is the Polar Bear King, the one responsible for souls of bears when they die and are born, and she has been promised to him since she was a baby.
He takes her away to his ice castle and courts her. I was afraid it would be all beauty and the beast, and to some extent it is, but the author infects Cassie with a sense of fun, and Bear with a warm, earnest patience and caring.
Of course, she breaks the rules and looks on his human face, sending him to imprisonment in a troll castle, but the book neatly ties all her adventures and Bear's vocation together when she risks everything to save him.
I loved it.
