Review: Midnight Frost

MIDNIGHT FROST
Mythos Academy #5
Jennifer Estep
Paranormal Young Adult
400 pages
Kensington Teen
Available July 30th
Source: ARC from author for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Here we go again …

Just when it seems life at Mythos Academy can’t get any more dangerous, the Reapers of Chaos manage to prove me wrong. It was just a typical night at the Library of Antiquities — until a Reaper tried to poison me. The good news is I’m still alive and kicking. The bad news is the Reaper poisoned someone else instead.

As Nike’s Champion, everyone expects me to lead the charge against the Reapers, even though I’m still hurting over what happened with Spartan warrior Logan Quinn. I’ve got to get my hands on the antidote fast — otherwise, an innocent person will die. But the only known cure is hidden in some creepy ruins — and the Reapers are sure to be waiting for me there …

MY THOUGHTS
As action-packed and engaging as we’ve come to expect from Ms. Estep, Midnight Frost is another fantastic addition to the Mythos Academy series, providing us with a complete story arc within the book itself while simultaneously furthering the larger arc of the battle against Loki. One of the highlights of Ms. Estep’s writing, and this series in particular, is that each installment brings something new to the table – an emotional revelation, a significant physical battle, or even better, a desirable combination of the two – to keep everything moving forward, and we’re never left feeling as though we’re simply biding our time during the build up of something larger to come down the line.

Gwen is hurting at the beginning of this fifth installment, Logan’s absence and the echoes of their battle haunting her dreams instantly snapping our bond to her back in place even after months apart, and our hearts easily take up the beat of the painful tune led by Gwen’s own. While she’s certainly upset that Logan left and finds her mind wandering to him often, she’s not lost without him, instead she continues on as she always has when life has dealt her a punishing blow (of which there have been many), his absence felt and mourned but not obsessed over. She has a group of loyal friends and a job to do being Nike’s champion, and she never once lets her broken heart redefine and reshape the girl she was before Logan left.

Because Gwen is such a strong young woman in her own right, our time with her is not spent simply waiting for Logan to reenter the picture as is sometimes the case when a main couple is separated, rather we are with her one hundred percent, as involved in her newest predicament as ever. When Logan does finally make an appearance, the way Gwen handles the situation has us attempting to high-five the book as though she might feel our pleasure and admiration through the pages. She lets him know in no uncertain terms how his leaving affected her, and forces him to acknowledge that he's not the only one scarred by Loki’s intimate violation. Though Gwen is angry, and rightfully so, she’s not so angry that she doesn’t recognize Logan’s pain and trample over it in favor of expressing her own, instead she’s able to put herself in his shoes and not add to the guilt and shame he’s already carrying.

Overall, Midnight Frost satisfies on every level as have all the books that came before it, and the Mythos Academy series continues to be one that encourages the procrastination of work and the forgoing of sleep in favor of reading.

Rating: 4/5
 

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This book was sent to me by the author free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Review: Dark Frost

DARK FROST
(Mythos Academy #3)

Jennifer Estep
Paranormal Young Adult
336 pages
Kensington
Available May 29th
Received from author for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

I’ve seen so many freaky things since I started attending Mythos Academy last fall. I know I’m supposed to be a fearless warrior, but most of the time, I feel like I’m just waiting for the next Bad, Bad Thing to happen. Like someone trying to kill me—again.

Everyone at Mythos Academy knows me as Gwen Frost, the Gypsy girl who uses her psychometry magic to find lost objects—and who just may be dating Logan Quinn, the hottest guy in school. But I’m also the girl the Reapers of Chaos want dead in the worst way. The Reapers are the baddest of the bad, the people who murdered my mom. So why do they have it in for me?

It turns out my mom hid a powerful artifact called the Helheim Dagger before she died. Now, the Reapers will do anything to get it back. They think I know where the dagger is hidden, but this is one thing I can’t use my magic to find. All I do know is that the Reapers are coming for me—and I’m in for the fight of my life.

MY THOUGHTS

The Mythos Academy series is one where the road traveled by its characters gets progressively rougher with each installment, the tests Gwen faces increasing in emotional and physical intensity to ensure that what started out as a lighter connection to characters and story darkens and solidifies into something we feel with every beat of our hearts. One of Ms. Estep’s strengths lies in her ability to pair humor with pain, life with loss, and romance with heartbreak, always adding a little grit to an otherwise smooth story, our skin abrading when we come in contact with it to act as a sharp reminder that in Gwen’s world, as in reality, suffering is a part of life. Though the burden Gwen carries as Nike’s Champion weighs more heavily from one book to the next, Ms. Estep never allows the darkness hovering on the fringes of her tale to fully infect and consume the story itself, crafting characters who repeatedly rise battle-ready with weapons drawn, prepared to be the first line of defense against any evil threatening their lives, their loved ones, and their world.

Gwen is a young woman whose growth continues to impress us the more time she spends at Mythos, starting out a true outcast who often lamented her status but did relatively little to ingratiate herself fully with the other students, to someone with a drive and determination to strengthen herself physically while striving to more thoroughly understand the scope of her pyschometry. She handles the constant emotional turmoil with Logan (and at times with best friend Daphne) remarkably well, never allowing her backbone to bend under the onslaught and instead keeping her head held high as she continues to wish for an outcome she’s not sure will ever truly be possible. While she does crumble a bit under the guilt stemming from certain events that take place in the last several chapters, her feelings of failure and inadequacy are more than understandable, and she only wallows in them briefly before drawing her spine straight once more and soldiering on.

Dark Frost is a pivotal book in the series in terms of the main story arc with Loki and the Reapers of Chaos, the minor developments of the previous two installments culminating in a conclusion that has us quivering in anticipation of the next book. There’s no jaw-dropping cliffhanger thankfully, but our need for more time in this world as the characters struggle to deal with the aftermath of all that’s happened is at an all time high as we close the back cover. While the identities of the Reapers are fairly easy to deduce, that knowledge doesn’t detract from our overall enjoyment as we’re easily wrapped up in Gwen, Logan and an epic battle of good versus evil, knowing all the while Ms. Estep will never make things easy for our heroes and heroines and loving her all the more for it.

Rating: 4/5