K Webster-Cold Queen

Once upon a time, back in 1844, Hans Christian Anderson, who was a little twisted, wrote a fairy tale called The Snow Queen. In his story, the evil Snow Queen kidnaps Kai, who is eventually saved by Gerda. So, you might wonder what that has to do with K Webster and Cold Queen. Well, let me tell you. Once upon a time, right here and now in 2019, K joined several other authors in writing their own version of a fairy tale. Thus, this book was born from The Snow Queen. (At least I’m 99.8% sure it’s the Snow Queen.)

The world we are in is divided into quarters. Each quarter is named after the direction it is in. Elzira Whitestone is the Queen of Norta Icelands, Punisher of the Damned, Weathermaker, Cold Queen, dying queen. She has a younger sister named Yanna. Yanna is the only living member of her family left. She also does all kinds of searching to figure out what is killing Elzira and to try to cure her. Yanna has come up with some potions and tonics that Elzira takes every day, which are supposed to heal her, but she’s still very weak, can’t access her magic, and is probably going to die soon.

Enter Ryke Bloodsun, King of Souta Volcanoes, Truth Seeker. He’s on his way to a huge war, and he wants to marry Yanna so that he can have the support of Norta Icelands. So, he gets to their castle, tells our royal ladies what he wants to do, at which point Elzira tries to kill him. So, he does what any self-respecting warrior king would do, and he takes over. He sticks Yanna in a small room in the bottom of the castle and takes Elizra up to her room. His goal is to convince Elizra to let him marry Yanna, but of course, our cruel queen isn’t going to let him do that. And there’s just some thing about her that Ryke likes. He’s fascinated by her, and he wants to know more about her, including why she is as ill as she is.

This is a really interesting story. There was a lot going on in here. The story is just fantastic. There is adventure and intrigue, betrayal, love, hate, war, and just about everything else in between.

Ryke is brutal, intelligent, tricksy, and willing to fight for what he wants. It’s not like he lives to fight or fights to live or anything, but he will fight, he does fight, and he’s damned good at it. He’s also very, very good at finding out the truth, and he’s pretty sure that there’s a lot of truth that needs to be found out up in this joint. He’s not going to be all that nice about finding it out either. If people need to die, then they will die. He’s actually pretty practical if you ask me.

We really see two Elziras. One before Ryke and one after he has started doing what he does. It’s really interesting to me. When you meet the 2nd Elizra, you can see those echoes back in her at the beginning of the book, but she’s really just a pale shadow of herself then, almost a wraith, more than anything else. She is caring, to a point. She loves her sister, she cares about certain members of her staff, but overall, the only person she really loves at the beginning is her sister. She’s also loyal to a fault. She will do anything she can to protect her sister. I think that she’s also got some blind spots. I think that there are certain people she trusts too much, and she never questions anything those people do.

Like I said, this was a fantastic story. And there are more twisted fairy tales from other authors that will be showing up over the next few months. I’m really looking forward to them all.

I love the name changes. I think that they are perfect.

OK, that’s all for this one. Go and check it out! Happy reading!