Books › The Face in the Frost
The Face in the Frost
First published 1969 · 176 pages
A delightfully eccentric wizardly adventure that slowly unravels into a surreal and genuinely terrifying nightmare.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting by a warm hearth on a crisp autumn night, only to realize the shadows in the corners of the room are slowly creeping closer. It masterfully balances the cozy, bickering camaraderie of two aging, eccentric wizards with a creeping sense of surreal dread that borders on gothic horror. The prose is wonderfully idiosyncratic, blending anachronistic humor and whimsical world-building with sudden, chilling imagery that lingers long after the page is turned. Moving at a brisk pace, the narrative pulls you from comfortable eccentricities into a disorienting, high-stakes nightmare. It is a perfect read for those who love their fantasy laced with genuine spookiness, celebrating the quiet bravery required to face down the dark.
- Mood
- autumnal
- surreal
- creeping dread
- cozy-yet-creepy
- Tone
- wry
- eccentric
- ominous
- whimsical
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the comfort of friendship · facing ancient evils · the fragility of reality · aging and legacy
- The writing
- Richly descriptive and idiosyncratic, effortlessly pivoting from folksy, anachronistic humor to passages of chilling, gothic terror.
- The arc
- Begins as a quirky, comfortable romp between old friends before descending into a surreal, escalating nightmare that demands profound courage.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave atmospheric, autumnal fantasy where eccentric, aging wizards face down genuinely unsettling horrors.
Content notes
- mild horror
- eerie imagery
- peril
About the book
The Face in the Frost is a fantasy classic, defying categorization with its richly imaginative story of two separate kingdoms of wizards, stymied by a power that is beyond their control. A tall, skinny misfit of a wizard named Prospero lives in the Southern Kingdom—a patchwork of feuding duchies and small manors, all loosely loyal to one figurehead king. Both he and an improbable adventurer named Roger Bacon look in mirrors to see different times and places, which greatly affects their personalities and mannerisms and leads them into a myriad of situations that are sometimes frightening and often hilarious. Hailed by critics as an extraordinary work, combining the thrills of a horror novel with the inventiveness of fantasy, The Face in the Frost is the debut novel that launched John Bellairs' reputation as one of the most individual voices in young adult fiction.
Written with an older audience in view, this book was inspired by Bellairs's reading of the Lord of the Rings series. An unfinished sequel titled The Dolphin Cross can be found in the anthology titled Magic Mirrors.
Description from Open Library.
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