Mina is beautiful but so very cold and so very lonely. Her father is a powerful but selfish wizard who can pour some of his life energy into inert material to create animated objects. Faced with a wasting disease, her father manipulated sand and created Mina a new crystal heart that kept her alive, but did not beat. Her mother soon died from grief, and her father told her she would never be able to love and be loved. Loathed by people for her father's magical abilities, Mina grew up lonely in the south of the kingdom. When she realized she also possessed the power to shape glass, she wisely kept this secret away from her domineering father. Then he received an amazing opportunity. He was summoned to court to help the king and his queen.
A few years later, Mina comes to live at court in Whitespring Castle, in the north. A curse has blanketed the land with perpetual snow, so that nothing grows in this part of the Kingdom and it is always cold. She catches the king's eye, who is unconsolable with the death of his wife, but who needs a stepmother for his young daughter, Lynet. Lynet is the spitting image of his wife, and her father adores her. Hoping to retain the king's attention, Mina crafts a man out of glass. Designed to love her and teach her about love, the huntsman is also a spy in the king's entourage, meant to keep tabs on him and report back to Mina.
After a short courtship Mina and the king are soon married, but their union is not consumed, and even though she is queen she is barely accepted by the local nobility. But Lynet loves her, and soon they become a very tight family, until Mina realizes that the king plans on replacing her with Lynet. For her part, Lynet loves her stepmother, but is very sheltered and has never wondered why she never gets cold. She also loathes any reference to how she looks like her dead mother and fears that her father expects her to become that woman, losing her own identity in the process. When a new surgeon arrives at Whitespring, the delicate dance between Mina, Lynet, and the king is broken. Not much older than Lynet, the surgeon offers her something no one else has: a window to the outside world.
As Lynet discovers more about her past and her birth, she realizes the depth of deceptions that surround her at Whitespring. When the king sets Lynet and Mina on a frontal collision course, plans are set in motion that will cost someone their life, as only one person can be queen. A retelling of Snow White, this book examines the origins of the stepmother and how she became the villain of the tale. Beware, however, for even villains can be redeemed!
No comments:
Post a Comment