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Stuart Hill
LAST BATTLE OF THE ICEMARK
Last Battle of the Icemark is the last book in the Icemark Trilogy. It is about a small kingdom called the Icemark, who are in the middle of the Polypontian Empire, the Corsairs from the coast and the Land of the Ghosts. The Polypontian Empire has been at war with the Icemark ever since Bellorum turned his greedy eye to the country. In the last book Scipio Bellorum, the mad Polypontian conqueror, and his two sons were defeated by the Icemark’s warriors and the Allies. In this book, ever since the death of Bellorum, the Polypontian's have been in chaos. The “Old Hypolitan” (a twisted branch of one of the Icemark’s Allies) took advantage of this and started conquering the Polypontian Empire. Little did they know though that Cronus, the Master of all Darkness, was actually controlling the thoughts of the “Old Hypolitan’s” chief into making this war. He was doing this to divert his son, Oskan Witchfather – wife to Queen Thirrin of the Icemark, from discovering his plan of invading the Icemark from the Spirit Realms. Cronus was helped along in this plan by Oskan’s evil daughter, Medea. Medea is a very odd character – in book two I absolutely loathed her. I disliked her for most of this book, but I do feel that deep down under her layers of evil there was love and compassion. Love, twisted by hate and jealousy. There are times though that I pitied her. She was given lots of chances to become a good person again, but she made the wrong choices that took her down the wrong path. Oskan was considered by me to be more powerful than in the second book, I was deeply irritated though that for the first half of the book they omitted mentioning the dreadful sacrifice Oskan would have to make. In the second book I believed that his love for Medea made him very blind to the fact that she was trying to kill her brother. In this book he was more wary and used his talent to thwart her attempts to murder her brother and his best friends, Mekmhet and Kirimin. The funniest characters in the book would have to be King Grishmak of the Werewolves, Tharaman-Thar of the Ice Leopards and Olememmnon, Consort of the Basilea. They were great friends always challenging each other to eating duels and cracking jokes. Their eating duels made me feel sick sometimes. I do not eat meat myself which made it worse, but reading about these three in a race consisting of eating an entire cow, made me queasy. Thirrin, Queen of the Icemark, was again her usual strong figure. In this book she gave up at times which doubled my liking of her. You can’t always be the strong warrior queen. Her daughter, Cressida-Crown Princess and heir to the throne of Icemark- became rather bossy, but opened up a softer side to her. She developed a crush on the Polypontian Commander’s son who became there new allies. I really liked this part of the book because it showed Cressida in a less hard way. It had her fumbling about trying to look good for her crush and actually acting like another girl of her age in love. Sharley - Prince Charlemagne , Shadow Before the Storm- wasn’t given a large role as he was in the second book. I felt rather disappointed about this because I rather began to build a connection with him. The only part where he is one of the main centred characters is when Medea lures him, Mekmhet and Kirimin to the Spirit Realms in the attempt to murder them. The contrasting of this part of the book was great, Stuart Hill kept swapping from scene to scene to scene – making you bite your nails wanting to know what happens next. This book emphasises the power of the minority against the majority. Queen Thirrin is the most successful ruler the Icemark has had and is a woman. I like the idea of this because it shows another side of women, they aren’t weak and feeble as people think. The country Icemark is actually a tiny country, compared to all their enemies countries. Yet the Icemark is the country that always comes out on top. This idea is one that should be in everyone’s minds when they are about to do something against someone else. I think that Stuart Hill wanted that message to be portrayed through this series and it most certainly did. This series is a really engaging series. It is a bit slow in the first book, but if you stick at it, the great plot twists have you involved in the story forever. In the Last Battle of the Icemark I was drawing out reading the book so that when I woke up after going to bed I would have something interesting and amazing to look forward to. This is a great series, it has love, mystery, action, humour, pity, betrayal and more emotions than I can think of , this combines into making you turn the page eagerly not waiting to be able to read the next change in the story.
