The Snow Queen

By: Mercedes Lackey

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Aleksia, Queen of the Northern Lights, is mysterious, beautiful, and widely known to have a heart of ice. No one would seek her wisdom except as a last resort. But when she's falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, she realizes there's an impostor out there far more heartless than she could ever be.

And when a young warrior following the Tradition disappears, leaving his sweetheart and mother to fear the worst, Aleksia's powers are needed as never before.

Now, on a journey through a realm of perpetual winter, it will take all her skills, a mother's faith and a little magic to face down an enemy more formidable than any she has ever known....

©2008 Mercedes Lackey (P)2008 Audible, Inc.

perfect

I enjoy the author and the reader. I am so glad it is the same reader as the last books. I enjoy her character voices.

Pronunciation is a problem

How could the performance have been better?

I really wish the narrator had taken the time to figure out how to pronounce certain of the words in this book. Other reviews have mentioned the mispronunciation of the word "mage", so I won't belabour that, but the narrator also repeatedly mispronounces "Sami" (She says Sam-eye instead of Sam-ee.) As with the word mage, you might think, "Well, but how often could that possibly come up? I'm sure it won't be a problem." It comes up a lot though. Probably almost as much as "mage." I've listened to, and enjoyed, other performances by Gabra Zackman, but this one made me want to shoot myself. I spent a lot of my listening time muttering correct pronunciations under my breath.

Any additional comments?

I enjoy the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, but this installment is merely "Okay." Were I to rank them in order of preference, this book would take the bottom spot.

Great story, but

Mercedes Lackey never fails in delivering a great book. My only complaint, is not with the book itself but with Audible advertising the book as a "sizzling" level romance in the romance package. That title would be better suited to Fortune's Fool. The amount of romance in this book barely qualifies as sweet.

Good Listen

I had read two or three other books in the 500 Kingdoms series. They aren't great works of literature but they are inventive and fun. I enjoy the author's work so I picked this one up.
It was good, the story pans back and forth between two areas of focus for much of the book, which was a little difficult at first because there's often no marker to indicate the switch. I was irked at the pronunciation of the word "mage," but other than that the narrator did an excellent job, even the accents were good.
The story was interesting and engaging, and I didn't see the ending coming. I would recommend the book to any fantasy lover as an interesting view on fairytales.

Great, except for the mispronunciation ...

I love Mercedes Lackey stories and have all her books. This story is very enjoyable, but the narrator mispronounces 'mage' as maj or maj-is (mages). That simply made me crazy and I can't figure out why the producers didn't stop it. Such a simple thing, but when it would irk the heck out of me every single time I heard another 'maj', I realized that much more and I would have stopped listening to the story. Now I'm worried about listening to another book read by this narrator, even though she has a beautiful voice. Although, her voices for the different characters seemed to change a bit as well. Regardless, I would still recommend this story for a light and enjoyable listen.

This book served me well while on a two month road trip, as it kept me busy while on a few very long days of driving.