¿Cómo podrá Damian Knight resistirse a los encantos de la joven Miranda? El mayor de los hermanos Knight -protagonistas de esta serie de novelas románticas ambientadas en el siglo XIX- tiene que cumplir con su deber: sacar a Miranda del internado, llevarla a Londres y encontrarle un buen partido para que se convierta en una dama de sociedad. Pero Miranda tiene otros planes, y cada noche se escapa para actuar en un teatro de variedades.

Lord of Ice is another winning story from Gaelen Foley. In my opinion, it was a little light on the romance, with the historical and suspense elements being given almost equal weight, but it was still a wonderful and engaging book. I did not find this to be a predictable read at all. There were several times that the direction of the story surprised me, but none more so than the ending or perhaps I should say endings. The main plot of the story climaxed about forty pages or so from the end of the book and then turned in a completely unexpected direction, actually giving it a second ending of sorts plus an epilogue. I'm not really sure this second ending was necessary, but it did give another slice of life scenario to this appealing couple. I loved the warm family atmosphere surrounding the Knight clan. Even though they are of mixed parentage and each of the siblings has a distinct personality, they are a very close-knit and welcoming family. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Miranda spies the Knight brothers having a late-night snowball fight like a bunch of unruly schoolboys. It was an extremely heartwarming scene that left a huge smile on my face. I also really appreciate Ms. Foley's use of details to enrich the narrative. In some books I have read, such descriptions can be dry and slow the pace, but in Lord of Ice, everything from the account of the Knight family's Christmas celebration to the political climate of the era was woven together seamlessly and in an engaging way that made it seem like I was actually there.

Damien and Miranda were a memorable hero and heroine. Damien is an intense, tortured alpha with the call of the warrior in his blood and an extreme case of PTSD from the time he spent in the Peninsular War fighting on the front lines. After an incident in Lord of Fire, where he lost track of where he was and came back to himself with weapons in his hands, he decided to live a solitary life for the safety of his loved ones. The psychological pain he experiences is so intense that he has thought of killing himself more than once, and he has a few flashbacks that were violent enough to make me a tad squeamish, one involving a horse, which as an animal lover, was particularly disturbing. Miranda is a strong, independent-minded young lady, who is a spitfire without being shrewish and is gentle and sensitive without being a push-over, which is an amazing balance for an author to be able to strike. At first, I found myself thinking of Miranda in a childish way, but perhaps that was a stroke of genius on Ms. Foley's part, since that is what Damien had initially thought as well. It didn't take long for Miranda to “grow up”, and although she did lie to Damien a few times, I am happy to say that she never had any TSTL moments. She was a very smart girl, who always seemed to know when to cut her losses and simply tell the truth. Miranda had been through tremendous pain in her own life. She was a bastard child, lost her parents at a young age, was sent to live in a terrible boarding school where she was abused, and now her own uncle is trying to kill her, yet she somehow still maintains a spirited, “glass half-full” approach to life. My other favorite scene is when Miranda tried to get a rise out of the buttoned-up Damien by saying some rather scandalous things, which made me laugh. Miranda is not afraid to go after what she wants, and that, she discovers pretty quickly, is Damien. She is almost the exact opposite of Damien, but is deftly able to handle him, even in his darkest moments. I loved her fearlessness, determination and loyalty to her man, and how she never gave up on him, even when he tried his best to drive her away. The personalities of this couple reminded me a great deal of the hero and heroine from Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels, so anyone who has enjoyed that book, should like this one and vice versa.

The cast of secondary characters was superb with all the Knight siblings playing fairly significant roles except for black sheep, Jack, who has yet to make an appearance. It was so nice to catch up with Robert and Bel from The Duke, as well as Lucien and Alice from Lord of Fire, and see the changes in their lives. I like that these books seem to take place almost consecutively, with no time lost in between stories. Also present were Jacinda, Lizzie and Alec who get their own books later in the series. There were also brief appearances by Bel's father from The Duke and two of Lucien's young secret agents from Lord of Fire. Readers are given an introduction to the scandalous but charming thief, Billy Blade, who becomes the hero and object of Jacinda's affection in the next book, Lady of Desire, as well as, the dashing Ian “Griff” Prescott, who becomes the hero of Her Only Desire, the first book in the Spice Trilogy spin-off series. I have to say that both of these men have definitely piqued my interest. With Mr. Reed and Miss Brocklehurst, the headmaster and headmistress of the girl's school; the evil Algernon Sherbrooke, Miranda's murderous uncle; and all of his cronies from the Raptors street gang, there were bad guys aplenty. There was also Algernon's son, Crispin, who is a dissolute rake with a gambling problem, but who doesn't quite seem to have his father's penchant for villainy. All in all, this was a very full and well-rounded cast that made the narrative even more robust.

There was very little I didn't like about the book, but if there was one thing I could change it would be that Damien and Miranda would have had more scenes together. When Damien let his guard down, and they were in each other's presence, they lit up the pages, but most of the time Damien kept Miranda at arms length, thinking it best for her safety. I sometimes wished that he would lighten up a little and not be so stubborn, as I sometimes felt like there was an arctic chill emanating from the pages. Then again, he was an uber-alpha, making those characteristics consistent with his personality. Also, it was pretty overtly implied that Miranda was molested by the headmaster of her school, but other than the mere acknowledgment of the abuse and justice being served, this aspect of her life was never really explored. I found this to be a little disappointing, but I suppose understandable considering the sheer volume of events that were already on the canvas, as well as the darkness of Damien's PTSD. The inclusion of too many unhappy incidents would have made the story depressing, when a large part of it was pretty intense already. Overall though, these were fairly minor detractors from an otherwise extremely well-written novel. I don't think that any author to date has given me three keepers right in a row, but Gaelen Foley did just that with the first three books of her Knight Miscellany series which I greatly look forward to continuing soon. Lord of Ice is preceded by The Duke and Lord of Fire and is followed by Lady of Desire, Devil Takes a Bride, One Night of Sin and His Wicked Kiss. While Lord of Ice was not to my knowledge ever billed as a Christmas story, the bulk of it does take place around that time of year, making it a timely read for the upcoming holiday season. ( )

Lord of Ice was OK. I really enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book. I felt sorry for Damien having to deal with his PTSD and I admired how Miranda did her best to try to help him overcome his demons. However, once they uttered the "love" word, the romance become sappy and the rest of the story so predictable that I just didn't care how it was going to end. ( )

I'm not sure what it is, but trying to read Foley again after years passing has just not been successful for me... I can't stand the writing style or the characters... think I'm just going to delete this and the rest of her books off my kindle for now...

I'm beginning to wonder how much I actually enjoyed The Duke after the next two in the series. This one suffered massively from "skimming" over things, or just plain summarizing pretty huge events. I've come to appreciate, and almost love, how Foley just seems to really embrace the most dramatic tropes possible. But this book suffered so massively from multiple sections just being "summed" up. The entire last 10% of the book is literally just Foley telling us a bunch of stuff that happened, and as a result there's absolutely no emotional impact at the end. None. It was like Foley remembered, "Oh, shit, Napoleon escaped Elba and I'm already at 285 pages."

That being said, at least Damien and Miranda weren't QUITE as Too Stupid To Live as Lucien and Alice, but it would've been a very very close contest. ( )