Stealing Snow

Snow is locked in a psychiatric hospital, her anger controlled by means of a cocktail of drugs. She sees her mother infrequently and her father refuses to visit. The one glimmer of hope in her life is her love for a fellow inmate, Bale, an arsonist whose destructive tendencies, like Snow’s, are suppressed by medication.

However, Snow – like almost all of the characters in this book – is not what she seems and a terrifying journey through a mirror brings her to the mysterious world of Algid, where, to her astonishment and incredulity, she is a Princess, daughter of an evil and corrupt King. The revelations continue thick and fast and Snow discovers that her destiny is to save this world – her world – from the clutches of this indomitable power.

The narrative is ripe for plucking by TV companies, redolent of intricately plotted fantasies and characters possessed of mysterious and magical powers. Action is whirlwind-fast, non-stop and frantic, moving from one elaborate stage set to another with the aid of magic and trickery. Loyalties seem to shift bewilderingly, as characters are rarely who or what they first appear to be. The story has a deep seam of romance woven through it as a clutch of charismatic males become entangled with Snow: indeed, the reason she travelled to the world of Algid was that she was trying to find Bale and bring him back to what appeared to be the real world of the psychiatric unit-even though this, too, is not as it seems.

Stealing Snow gives young readers a highly-coloured opportunity to immerse themselves in a fashionable and intriguing genre, but they will need to keep their wits about them to keep pace with the convolutions of plot and character. The book’s blurb promises an ‘epic new series’ which will ensure that readers are hooked in for some considerable time to come.