Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

Title: Ice
Author: Sarah Beth Durst
Source: Library
Genre: Young Adult
Set in: Alaska
Awards: 2009 Andre Norton Award Finalist
Rating: 3.75 out of 5

My thoughts:
Ice was another YA fantasy that was praised across the internet and one that I had high hopes for. I wont say I was disappointed completely but I had major problems with the first half to really enjoy the novel as a whole.

Ice is a retelling of the Norse folktale called East of the Sun and West of the Moon. While the folktale itself is awesome, I had the same problems with this book that I had with Shiver. Lets get to the story first.

Cassie thought that her mom died when she was very young. But later she comes to know that her mom is actually alive and trapped in the Troll castle at the end of the world called East of the Sun and West of the Moon. When the polar Bear king approaches her, she makes a pact with him. She will agree to marry him only if he brings her mother back from the Troll castle.

Now here is my first problem. How can Cassie marry a polar bear and even if she does I don’t understand her attraction towards him. I mean seriously, how can you fall in love with a bear?

Although there are explanations, I couldn’t really get into the book for the first half because I had so many questions. After I got over the fact that she could fall in love with a bear, the book came together for me.

The second half was amazing where Cassie has to travel to the Troll castle to rescue her husband, the bear King. Ms Durst can make you feel like you were present in the Icy Alaska. I’ve never thought that miles and miles of ice could be beautiful before reading this book. The end was awesome and really imaginative.

I do recommend this book because I know that not many people will have the problems that I had with this book. Read it if you love YA or fantasy or folk tale retellings.

Movie: The Secret of Roan Inish

Some of you might have read my recent review of Selkie Girl. Before reading the book I had no clue what a Selkie is or what a Selkie legend is. So obviously I googled. I found out that there is a movie which refers to this Selkie legend. It’s called The Secret of Roan Inish which was released in 1994 and is based on the book named The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry.

The book is based in Scotland but the movie is based in Ireland. I wanted to see this movie immediately and I did. I loved it. It’s about a young girl Fiona who is sent to live with her grandparents in Ireland. Her brother was lost to the sea when he was just a baby. According to the family legend, the baby is said to be raised by the Selkie’s somewhere deep in the ocean. But everyone believes it’s just a myth.

You have to see the movie to know the rest.

The story as a whole was good, but what I LOVED the most was the cinematography. Also the music is simply beautiful. Please do watch the trailer below if you haven’t seen the movie. In fact, if you click on the video it will take you to the You Tube page where you can actually see the entire movie. I don’t know if it’s legal but I didn’t find the movie here, so that was an only option.

I don’t know how popular the movie is else where but I had never heard about it before.

Have you watched the movie? Did you like it?

I’m back…

We were supposed to return on 17th but my husbands work got postponed, so we came back yesterday instead. I’m so refreshed. It was such a good change.

We visited quite a few places at weekends. Srilanka is sooooo hot this time of the year though. We did a little of both, luxury traveling as well as backpacking. Both were fun. We visited a few Buddhist temples,

visited the elephant orphanage,

did jet skiing, held a croc

and river cruised.

Colombo is not as developed as I thought the capital of a country would be but its understandable since there were important things like the war to concentrate on. Now that the war is finally over, Srilankan’s can enjoy a peace and freedom. Still, there were a lot of policemen and Army people on the road. every time we went out we were stopped for random checking. It surprising how you get used to it after some time.

I read 4 books, reviews of which would be coming up soon, I hope.

I was pleasantly surprised by the large number of bookstores in Colombo, there is one for like every 5Km. I bought 3 books, 2 of which are by Srilankan authors.

My MIL is visiting us for a month, she’ll be coming tomorrow, so I guess I’ll be busy but I might get time to blog and comment. Hopefully.

I missed the readathon, I’m sure it must have been fun. So how have you all been?