3.5 Stars rounded up to 4

That was a really interesting and creative take on the legends of the Japanese Ninja and Samurai. I mean vampire ninjas is a pretty cool concept. This is slightly on the longer side but as I know there is a shortage of YA action adventure books with male protagonists I would still encourage high school librarians to give this one a read and see if it would work in their library. It's a really engaging story with a blend of fantasy, action, supernatural, mystery and historical fiction. There are also some really good supporting characters in this heroes and heroine's journey.

CW: There are references to seppuku and a lot of bloody fights (including beheading) and blood drinking incidents.

On a side note, I listened to it as an audiobook and I was really disappointed that the voice actor did not pronounce some of the frequently used Japanese words correctly. ( )

Awesome ( )

In Short: Light is in terrible danger. Her father, an Arctic explorer is missing, presumed dead. She is being stalked by strange creatures straight out of Inuit legend. Butler, her friend and protector, is hiding something from her. She sets off on a journey to the Arctic, to discover the truth about her father and her own past.

What I thought:
I feel very ambivalent about this book. Some bits I loved. Other bits (mostly in the last half) were not so great.

It is beautifully illustrated by Liane Payne.

Each chapter has a little iconic being that reminds me of traditional Inuit art:

The story starts well. Light is an interesting character. She is a half Inuit albino, living in her father’s mansion in Ireland. She is an eccentric loner, half stubborn and half scared. Her father has been declared “missing, presumed dead” while in the Arctic on a scientific expedition . I could not help comparing her to some very similar female heroines – Lyra Silvertongue, who lost her father in the Northern Ice, and Garth Nix’s Sabriel, who sets out to save her father from the icy grip of Death.

Light’s initial reaction to the fantastical creatures from her father’s past is very convincing. Her mixture of fear and disbelief are just what I would expect to feel when suddenly confronted by a talking crow, or a man with a shark’s head. This makes her more believable than Lyra or Sabriel, both of whom are rather intimidatingly brave.

Here is a conversation between her and Tupilak – the shark-head man. Light is asking Tupilak what he ate on his journey across the sea:

“Sea Creatures” said Tupilak.
“Sea Creatures? Like what? Fish?”
“Fish yes. Some squid. A dolphin”
“You ate a dolphin?” Light asked, shocked. “How could you?”
“Well, it wasn’t easy. I had to tear out its throat. Then I ate its fins. But the body was very heavy.”



I also liked Nick Lake’s way with metaphor. When Light does not want to think about her father’s blog after he goes missing “the memory seemed to have grown thorns, and she could no longer touch it”.

Or Light’s thoughts as she journeys in the Arctic:

“Here on the ice cap she felt like a flea on the back of a polar bear. And at any moment the bear could choose to scratch”

There are many odd little philosophical moments. On board a ship in a pitching sea, Light watches the water in her glass moving in concert with the water outside with increasing unease.

“It was as though all the water in the world – though separated into seas and water glasses and rivers – wanted only to be together and still thought with one mind.”

Some don’t work so well for me, but still resonate:

“In the Arctic, though, the beauty of snow is underpinned by deadly danger – in the same way that a beautiful bunch of flowers becomes something more terrible and more devastating when you see it propped against a lamp post at the side of a busy road, with a note pinned to it.”



This book does not live up to its initial promise. I loved the characters, but did not get to know them. The last half degenerates into your standard series of Hollywood fight scenes complete with clever quips and improbable timing.

Maybe I am judging unfairly as I simply don’t like horror. There is a lot of gratuitous eyeball plucking and evisceration, and after a certain amount of this I stopped caring so much about the characters involved. Unlike the horror in, for example, Garth Nix’s stories, that can get pretty visceral, these incidents were just grossly “yuck” rather than heightening the drama.

My main problem was with the villain – the evil Frost. He is set up beautifully: a frightening, mysterious force that is so terrible that he does not even have a name in Inuit legend. But when he finally arrives on the scene he is disappointingly human – a character from a Gothic computer game rather than the embodiment of a force of nature.

There is a lot of potential here. The true enemy – the bitter landscape of the Arctic – is vividly portrayed. The story tries to explore a fascinating ideas of grief and fear, compassion and weakness. I wonder to what extent those ideas were smothered by an attempt to create a more conventional story of wham-bam adventure. ( )

This is a tale of an albino girl called 'Light', who is half Inuit, half Irish. She lives in a large Manor in Ireland with just the family retainer, called 'Butler'. Her Inuit mother died some years ago and her father has mysteriously disappeared on one of his expeditions to the Arctic, presumed dead. After the funeral, she begins to wonder what it was her father loved about the Arctic and Inuit traditions. Then things start to happen, creatures from the North appear and a shark-headed man 'Tupilak' also arrives to take care of them. Light is convinced that her father is alive, and has been kidnapped by Frost, the king of the cold. She has to go North and sort things out, and a terrifying adventure awaits her in the kingdom of ice...

We all agreed that this novel was great fun, and once things took off, it was surprisingly bloodthirsty! The author has successfully combined Inuit folklore with the more English version (though probably of Viking origin) of Jack Frost and set it all firmly in the present. The main characters are great - Tupilak, the shark-man with the legs of a polar bear is a fierce avenging monster; Butler with his moving tattoos is strong and enigmatic; and Light is an intriguing heroine, but not much is made of her being albino - it's just the way she is, and all will be explained later of course.

The title comes from the poem 'Frost at Midnight' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which opens - "The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind.", and reading that poem with hindsight, it has obviously been a strong inspiration for the novel, as has The Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. The cover is great too - sprinkled with white prismatic shards of ice which don't show up here, the chapters are headed with great little illustrations like Tupilak on the cover making for a well designed book that will be attractive to its main targets. I hope there's more to come from this author. ( )

Taro is a lonley boy from a small fishing village on the coast of Japan. Growing up in the time before the Tokugawa Shogunate, he has always felt different from the villagers around him. Except for his devoted friend, Hiro, Taro has no friends.

His world explodes when his father is killed in an attack by ninjas. During that attack, Taro's life is saved by another ninja and this changes everything for him. Forced to leave his mother and the only life he has ever known, Taro embarks on an adventurous journey to learn the truth.

This book combines ninjas, samurai warriors and vampires in a fun and interesting way. Really, it contains all the necessary ingredients for a book sure to please many boys, and readers who desire a plot driven story full of action.

While much of the story is ridiculous, it is that very aspect that can make it fun to read.

Try it. ( )