Mercedes Lackey takes on the Snow Queen

[bibliogramma]

The Snow Queen, Mercedes Lackey

The fourth volume of Lackey’s delightful Five Hundred Kingdoms stories, all of which draw on fairy tale traditions from around the world and feature competent and powerful female protagonists – often “Fairy Godmothers” – whose job it is to mitigate the harmful effects of “The Tradition” – the magical force that acts on the people of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, pushing them into fairy tale roles which can be potentially disastrous, even deadly (just think about all the grue and gore in traditional fairy tales, and this will make sense).

Aleksia, the protagonist of this instalment of the series, is a Fairy Godmother who lives in a northern kingdom. Much of her public persona is drawn from the fairytale of the Snow Queen, the heartless fairy who steals young men and holds them until they are saved by the courageous young women who love them. The reality, of course, is that the young men she steals away with are arrogant assholes who take their lovers for granted, and it's is all about making them realise just how much of an asshole they've been. Of course, she does all the usual Fairy Godmother work as well, nudging the lives of people all over the kingdom away from fairytale patterns that end badly.

Then Aleksia starts hearing rumours about a nearby kingdom where there is no Fairy Godmother, about an impostor who has taken on the role of the Snow Queen – only this Snow Queen is killing whole villages, and the young men she lures away are not returned to their brave lovers, a littler wiser and more aware of just how strong a force love can be. This Snow Queen’s victims are never seen again. And it’s up to Aleksia to stop her.

The folklore traditions at the heart of this novel are taken from the culture and mythology of the people of Finland, and particularly the indigenous peoples. Some of the characters Aleksia encounters are drawn from the Kalevala, an epic compilation of folk poetry from across Finland (and parts of the Baltic states, particularly Estonia), and the culture of the people she meets in her search for the impostor is clearly based on elements of Sami culture.

I enjoyed this, not just as another of Lackey’s reliably pleasant fantasy offerings, but also as an exploration of a European tradition that is not found all that often in SFF. It also reminded me of a series of novels that I’d read many years ago in my youth, but long since forgotten – the four Kalevala-inspired novels of Emil Petaja: Saga of Lost Earths, Star Mill, The Stolen Sun and Tramontane. I imagine they're long out of print, but now I have a hankering to re-read them. And of course, to re-read the Kalevala itself.