For much of my life I've been a fan of computer adventure games. I've always loved them, though lately they contain too much fighting for my taste, without enough context or character development to draw me in. The entire process becomes completing missions to get through a plotline introduced as a vehicle to take you through the action. The Killing Frost, in many ways, reminds me of one of today's adventure games.

The book contains a series of escalating missions, unrelated at first, but coming together by the end to explain the plot. Each mission is harder, more complex, more intricate or more dangerous, which after a while, tends to be repetitive.

As with adventure games, only one character was penned with enough detail and background to be interesting—Captain Arano Lakeland, the protagonist. The other characters had little background, no thought process other than what was required of the plot, and existed largely as stereotypes, again very much in line with a computer game, but not what I've come to expect from a science fiction novel.

Arano Lakeland, Captain in the elite Avenger squad, is a very angry man. He's angry because the his fiancé and family were killed by Bromidians, an insectoid race whose Empire takes expansionism to a new level—a race that doesn't mind openly destroying or enslaving in order to expand their power base.

Arano himself isn't human, though Padians can pass for human. In addition to being Padian, he's also a Daxia, a highly trained warrior working now for a military that represents a federation of free systems. Naturally the people who run this federation are humans (why does that always happen?) This is one of those books with stupid politicians and an intelligent military, portraying competent officers constantly being thwarted by an ignorant and corrupt government. Okay, technically the Avenger teams are an elite military unit, so we don't really know how much bungling goes on in the ranks of the normal army but still, there is a disproportionate amount of bad politician/good military here, enough so that the message is overkill. Clearly the author has strong feelings on this subject.

Arano leads his Avenger team to help start a much-needed war against the Bromidians. The problem is a peace treaty that his people don't want to break and the Bromidians don't care about. He has to prove that the Bromidians are in league with terrorist groups to get his war, which becomes tougher once the president of the galaxy is kidnapped and the next in line to rule is a the Grand Chancellor, a Bromidian sympathizer.

Fortunately, Arano's great anger against the Bromidians isn't always shown in a favorable light, and it's clear that in order to be redeemed, he has to come to terms with it, probably the most interesting part of the book. However that's the only inkling of character depth we're treated to, and I'm left feeling a bit cold.

Even Alyna, Arano's love interest, has no real background and no real emotions. Nor do we know why he is drawn to her, except for the fact that she's physically attractive. She doesn't come to life for me; hence their relationship remains meaningless. Like the rest of the characters, she's only there to support Arano, which is why the scenes from any other characters point of view aren't particularly interesting, and there are plenty of them.

There is one other thing about this book that drives me absolutely mad, though in this case, I refer to a personal preference rather than something most people would notice. Books that continually use unnecessary words tend to put me off, particularly adverbs. This is something most writers are taught to edit out and most editors would take issue with. This book is replete with such extraneous words and the frequency with which they occur kept pulling me from the story—unfortunate for any book, but particularly one without engaging characters.

As an example, the very first sentence of the book, "Arano Lakeland moved stealthily along the wooded bluff near his home, picking his way carefully and soundlessly through the darkness." I would think use of the word stealthily at least implies carefully. In any event, the word soundlessly isn't needed at all; it's simply repeating what was already said. A single instance of this sort of thing wouldn't require mention in a review--a book full of them has to.

As I'm sure you realize by now, The Killing Frost isn't a book I would recommend, unless you are a fan of the new breed of computer games where plot and character development take a back seat to repetitive action.

Reviewed by Steve Lazarowitz
Copyright 2006