White Stag (Permafrost, #1)

by Kara Barbieri

[Empress of Sass]

Disclaimer:

I was asked to read and review White Stag as part of the promotional tour for the book, and I received my review copy for free in exchange for a fair and honest review. I was not compensated by the author or publisher in any other way, and my opinions are entirely my own.

2.5 Stars/5

This book is set to release a week from now so I will keep my review as spoiler free as possible. My short, one sentence review of it? Interesting premise, poor execution, bland characters and an author who is trying to hard to the straddle the line between brutality and a romantic story.

Let’s dive in and unpack things. The world building in this novel needs serious work, and the novel suffers for it. The bones are there, but that is about it. This is in part exacerbated by the fact that the author takes the writing advice of throw out your first few chapters and dive into the action a little too literally. We begin the story thrust into a world we know nothing about. That would normally be okay, as long as the protagonist is learning alongside us like Harry Potter learns about the wizarding world, but that is not, in fact, the case here. Janneke has already been in this world for a hundred years, so I found the opening very confusing, and by the end, I still had way too many questions about the setting. What is the name of the human kingdom? Why does the society Janneke come from need a male heir if the role can simply be filled by giving a girl child a masculine name and dressing her as a boy? How do the Goblins actually live, are there cities, is their society just the main palace of the Erlking and then a collection of keeps ruled over by the lords? How many lords are there? What is life like for the average Goblin?

I really think this story would have benefitted from having its timeline altered, and allowed the first few chapters to be about Janneke being taken by the Goblins, and introduced into her new life and this new world slowly. We know equally as little about the human world she came from. Without this background info, I felt like I had to emotionally rush to catch up and actually care about her circumstances. I was left feeling distant and ambivalent through most of the book, because I didn’t care about the world or the characters, so the stakes behind the plot failed to land with me.

The characters in White Stag are very wooden and barely developed. Personalities blended together, hardly any stuck around the whole book, and even the main three- the protagonist, the love interest and the villain were all pretty bland and uninteresting. The side characters usually die before much can be learned about them, and they don’t affect the plot in any meaningful ways. The dialogue between Janneke and Soren is stilted and clunky, and pretty much every line out of Lydian’s mouth is eye-roll inducing, over the top, and dramatic.

The story at the heart of all of this is weak and anemic. The author never shows us why we should care, or what will really happen if the villain wins. We know as readers our sympathetic characters don’t want him to gain more power because of the horrific violence he inflicted on their lives, but this is watered down and weakened by the fact that ALL Goblin society is supposedly brutal, violent and cruel. Yes, he did horrible things to Janneke and Soren’s family, but all the other contenders for this throne are shone to be just as willing to murder, rape, pillage and scheme their way to the seat of power. I suppose we are supposed to want Soren on the throne, but so little is said about him as a ruler that I don’t know if he’d be any better. Sure, he’s kind to Janneke, but he’s in love with her, so I can’t say one way or another how he’d treat someone he didn’t love, because he’s never really shown interacting with anyone other than allies of convenience. Kindness for the person you love is not indicative of the kindness you would show for the average Goblin of the Permafrost.

I’m not even sure what the Erlking does anyway. The old one is killed off within the opening pages of the book, so as a reader I never got a sense of the role, whether the last one was a good King who should be mourned, and what qualities the next king should have. To decide on the next king, the Goblins hunt the White Stag, who we later learn is not only a symbol of the crown but holds the power. What Goblin magic entails is left ambiguous. From what we’ve seen, some can heal, most can track magically, especially the trail left by the stag, but beyond that, I have no idea how magic works in this world, and what having access to the power of the stag would do for a king. When a Goblin kills something, he absorbs its powers, but this doesn’t seem to have any real effect in the story other than the author telling us the character becomes more powerful.

Now to get into the hard stuff. I’m disappointed that like Damsel, another book I read this year, the female protagonist is sexually and physically abused, and this is played as “Traumatic Backstory Trauma” and not in a sensitive, thoughtful way, no, it is played to manipulate the reader into sympathizing with a character that has little personality outside of being tragically haunted by her past abuse. Janneke’s inner monologues are full and plentiful of her having flashbacks to the rape and torture she suffered before the beginning of the book, as well as the gender dysphoria forced upon her by her family raising her as a boy to fill the need for a male heir. She struggles with letting the Goblin characters see her as female, even though that’s clearly how she identifies inside.

There is nothing inherently wrong about including difficult subjects such as these in YA books. I think it’s important for young readers to read and explore these topics, but also these things need to be handled carefully, and not played for the shock. The rape and torture are included to show how bad of a character Lydian is in the quickest amount of time, and that is lazy poor writing in my opinion. Having Janneke being at the same time mentally broken and fragile, but constantly asserting her physical power and will/desire is a little whiplash-inducing. Every time the action slows down in the story, instead of developing the characters or the setting, we get more inner monologues about all the people who have hurt or failed Janneke in her life. It’s repetitive, unnecessary, and it doesn’t serve the narrative.

Most of this book is just a parade of hurdles, challenges meant to slow the characters down but ultimately play as a little boring and they begin to blend into each other. Tension is lacking from the interactions with the groups of various adversaries, and the non-Goblin monster challenges play like a who’s who of Norse mythology, but lacking any unique spin or interest. By the time we get to the end, the actual heart of the plot is barely there, and I can’t really see any reason to keep reading the next book or books in the series.

Overall, this is a 2.5 star read for me simply because it feels unfinished. Everything from the setting to the characters to the magic to the dialogue and the plot feels half-baked. In the past, I’ve rated books that I personally didn’t like 3-4 stars, simply because even though it wasn’t to my personal taste I could see what audience would like it, but with this book I can’t really recommend it to anyone, as there are similar dark fairytale series that do a much better job than this, as well as better fantasy books based on Norse mythology out now in YA fantasy.