#Forest of Shadows

[bigfrozenfan]

The History of Arendelle: A FROZEN Timeline

The History of Arendelle is much more than just a recap of Frozen I & II. In this video timeline we'll dive deep into Frozen lore that spans novels, comics, podcasts, and more! This video is made in close association with the Arendelle Archives, a group of Frozen superfans who've mapped out the lore and history very well. Find links to download some of their resources below! This video is also made in collaboration with ModernMouse and Josh Taylor plays a new in-universe Frozen character, named Josh Taylorson, a Royal Historian of Arendelle.

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction 1:44 ch. i - How the Timeline Works 4:30 ch. ii - The 1790s: Arendelle's Grand Reinvention 6:23 ch. iii - April 1812: The Battle of the Dam 7:51 ch. iv - 1812-1840: Dangerous Secrets - The Story of Iduna and Agnarr 11:03 ch. v - 1830-1840: Arendelle's Dark Years 14:05 ch. vi - July 1843: Frozen 17:19 ch. vii - July 1843: Once Upon a Snowman 17:39 ch. viii - December 1843: Olaf's Frozen Adventure 18:49 ch. ix - June 1844: Frozen Fever 19:54 ch. x - 1846: The Joe Caramagna Graphic Novels 22:21 ch. xi - September 1846: Forest of Shadows 24:24 ch. xii - September/October 1846: Frozen II 27:44 ch. xiii - December 1846: Polar Nights - Cast Into Darkness 29:17 ch. xiv - Spring 1847: Forces of Nature - Season One 30:44 Conclusion

ARENDELLE ARCHIVES RESOURCES: Annals of Frozen 2nd Edition The FrozenVerse - A List of All Official and Licensed Works Frozen Canon Talk 4th Edition Maps & Geography Anna and Elsa’s Lost Family Members

Download a high-quality PNG of the Frozen Timeline on Patreon

[cloudberriesforaqueen]

"The hotter the tale, the better." - Olaf on Dante's Inferno 🔥

Finally read Forest of Shadows and uh...

Hmmm...

Uh...

Uhm...

Ugh...

Er...

Oh...

Huh...

But I loved the part where Olaf mentions Dante's Inferno though! 😅

"Where have you been?" Anna asked. Olaf wandered from pile to pile, "The village library, listening to a lecture on Dante's Inferno— the hotter the tale, the better."

I can imagine him reading it to his little brothers...

...and maybe even acting it out, probably terrifying them in the process. I wonder how that would look like. Maybe he could ask for Bruni's help with the special effects? 😆

Edits by me! — ♡

[true--north]

This is one of the early F2 concept arts. On the left we see Frohana in F2 costumes, and on the right an interesting mountain house on their way. It seems to me that this is the house of that mad scientist Sorensen from the Forest of Shadows. I think this art is from the Iduna's diary version, and having met him, Frohana would have found out that Iduna visisted him in the past, looking for secret knowledge. The Forest of Shadows has the largest number of pre-F2 materials and the most canonical book from the side stories, I think.

[haveyouheardmetal]

Pictured: Six Waves of Woe, released in 2008

[tenshichan1013]

frozen 2 forest of shadows paperback edition 

[ericmicael]

Perhaps my most controversial take on "Frozen": I don't like that KristAnna is canon in "Frozen 1".

I don't think this kiss is natural.

For me, it would have been much better if it had just stayed with the kiss on the cheek, hinting that they could become a couple in the future.

The reason is quite obvious and simple: one of Anna's arcs in F1 is precisely related to her romantic feelings and being "confused" between two guys, the prince she met for a few minutes before agreeing to marry him and the poor man that she met for a few hours... If there isn't yet a KristAnna fanfic of "Titanic", do it. I put the word "confused" in quotes because I have my doubts that she would care about Kristoff if Hans didn't act stupid at the end, but whatever.

This arc ends with Hans for some reason not wanting to kiss Anna and preferring the more difficult path that would need a lot of luck to work (and there are still people who say he is one of the smartest Disney villains, I'm curious what the level of the least smart then). And since Hans didn't want to kiss her and perform the act of true love, she tries with Kristoff, but in the end she also ignores him and sacrifices her life to prevent her sister from being decapitated by the sociopathic prince. And then reveals that the act of true love that would save Anna is an act of love between sisters.

Okay, beautiful message. But then why the kiss at the end between Anna and Kristoff? Anna considering Kristoff as an option for an act of true love already makes her feelings clear and the kiss on the cheek also confirms their future relationship. Was the kiss on the mouth just to make it clear that a kiss can happen for no particular reason other than the will? It would come as no surprise to me if someone who wrote the screenplay for "Frozen 1" reveals that the kiss on the mouth was a Disney imposition because that cliché could not be missing from the film.

But I like KristAnna. If "Frozen Heart" made me consider Hans as something more than an NPC and understand when Jeniffer Lee called him a sociopath, "Forest of Shadows" made me like and root for the KristAnna romance.

In the book that presents the first officially lesbian characters in the franchise and has Elsa making her disinterest in men clear (and some say that there is still doubt about Elsa's sexual orientation lol), the KristAnna romance is extensively explored and especially Anna's initial feelings. Although Anna and Kristoff had been together for almost 3 years, the romance still seemed to have some doubts that end up being resolved in the book. And don't consider this to be a mistake, if you consider the Frozenverse to have very little KristAnna content, most of the time if you consider them just best friends it wouldn't be so wrong.

Sometimes it even seems that Elsa is the sister more connected to the romance and not Anna: we had the quasi-affair with Marisol, the secret admirer and even the man from Weselton who seemed romantically interested in her. Elsa's love life, ironically, has always had more substance than Anna's.

[person-of-indeterminate-size]

Reviewing Every Frozen Novel No. 1

Forest of Shadows:

This book starts out very strong but loses it's footing after the first few chapters. The writing in Forest of Shadows is meant to appeal people between the ages of to 10 and 12. There is nothing inherently wrong with the writing, it's just very predictable and the characters don't feel completely accurate to their movie counterparts. Where this book really shines however is with its set pieces. There are some very visually interesting scenes in this book that feel right at home in the Frozen universe, even if the characters do not. As well the action scenes felt exciting and there is a horror motif that was very refreshing for this franchise. Overall Forest of Shadows will scratch that itch if you're jonesing for another adventure in the Frozen franchise but really isn’t anything beyond that. It’s good.

Click Keep Reading for the in depth Spoiler Review

[SPOILERS] 

[SERIOUSLY COMPLETE AND TOTAL SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK]

The opening was very very good. Starting later that night when Anna and Elsa were 5 and 8 felt off putting in a good way. Having Anna’s parents there in her room sleeping alongside her to protect her and acting very sweet and nice to her felt unsettling, because you know the decisions that they had just made earlier that night. The wolf worked metaphorically as a representation for Anna’s fears. Having been unconscious of the events of that night I thought that her fears somehow knew subconsciously what had happened. She is playing with Elsa when suddenly, Elsa is gone and replaced with the embodiment of Anna’s insecurities which is what will hunt Anna down and destroy her. However it is later revealed that the wolf, even back then, was not conjured by Anna but by Elsa, who accidentally did an inception and implanted her fears into Anna's dream because she was repressing them. The wolf worked well as a metaphor for Anna’s fears but it works even better as a metaphor for Elsa’s. Elsa’s fear of being a monster that will only hurt Anna was born that night and continued to grow as she did. However the wolf stopped appearing in Anna’s dreams as Elsa learned to repress her fears (not good). Anna and Elsa’s relationship felt good in the first few chapters but as Elsa kept getting annoyed with Anna and Anna kept feeling too insecure to talk to her sister I felt more and more annoyed with their characters. Everything in this book could easily have been solved if the two just talked to each other; a trope that's common in a lot of fiction so generally couldn’t be faulted too much but this does take place after the events of Frozen 1. Their inability to talk to each other felt completely out of character. It didn’t help that the overall plot didn’t add anything new to their characters. It basically rehashed Frozen 1 again but with some details changed. Elsa accidentally threatened Arendelle with magic and the characters climb a mountain to talk to someone they believe can fix it, stopping at Oaken's on the way, then cross paths with magical creatures who send them back down the mountain in the false attempt to stop the problem when the actual solution is the true love between Anna and Elsa. True love being the answer is already what the characters learned in Frozen 1. The events in Forest of Shadows supposedly take place 5 weeks prior to Frozen 2. However, where the characters are at, emotionally, in Frozen 2 feels wildly disconnected to this book. One of the failings of this book was that Frozen has always been about Anna AND Elsa. I think this book would have been much improved if we had seen things from both of their perspectives. Not just Anna’s. I do like a lot of what this book does. The Nattmara felt powerful and frightening. It was a very creative creature. I liked many of the scenes in this book. Everything up to the Earth's giant passage under the fjord was great. I especially liked Anna and Elsa’s horse ride/SoYungs Blight encounter and the bold horror scene in the castle. The stand out scene in this book for me was The Ice Skating Scene on the river. It was a very clever set piece and Anna and Elsa actually talked to each other about how they were feeling. The magic in this book felt somewhat generic, and not from the Frozen franchise. The beginning of this book was very strong but the book overall got weaker over time. 

Some missed opportunities: 

The townsfolk should not have immediately woken up from their nightmares after the Nattmara was defeated. Instead they should have needed medicine. Specifically: Hot Chocolate. It felt like it was going to happen. They had set up that mint helped heal the animals somewhat and that when Anna and Elsa had nightmares that their parents would give them Hot Chocolate to help. Because the Nattmara's nightmare sleep was caused by Elsa it should have definitely been the cure. Like it felt so obvious to me but they never even resolved the mint thing.

They should have mentioned a purple cape in the library of missing objects. 

Overall Forest of Shadows will scratch that itch if you're jonesing for another adventure in the Frozen franchise but really isn’t anything beyond that. It’s good.

P.S. Elsa becomes a full on superhero.

P.P.S. Like for real there is this sequence where Elsa is wielding an ancient/powerful sword while staring down a monstrously tall white wolf. Black sand is seeping off of the wolf because the wolf is literally made of nightmares. The two of them are facing off on a bridge, the sun is setting, Elsa’s cape is being picked up by the wind. The two story tall white wolf and the bridge are all that stand between Elsa and Arendelle because the protective Ice Dome that Elsa put Arendelle under has shattered and has become a broken/jagged wall whose shards lay about the ground, and I need fan art of this scene right now.

[thereadingcafe]

[sandythereadingcafe]

#REVIEW:

FOREST OF SHADOWS (Alexis Forrest FBI 2) by @KateGableBooks at The Reading Cafe:

' The premise is dark and dramatic; the characters are determined and desperate.'

[fortunatelyperfectcreator]

[lightningstar1389]

Formidable moment for me as a child

[nipuni]

Silence in the library

A speedpaint video of this will be available at my Patreon on february 1st!

[true--north]

«Everyone seemed to think she was so wonderfully collected, but in truth, her quitness wasn't composed thinking, but a deer-in-the-path-of-an-arrow kind of fright»

Forest of Shadows

«Elsa reminded him of a deer — timid and easily frightened, with large blue eyes that held pools of sadness»

Conceal, don't feel

[jakeline-mt]

Lo tome como práctica para poder entender un poco más la teoría de color, creo que no quedó tan mal! Espero y les guste al igual que a mí ^^

[wondereads]

Weekly Reading Update (6/26/23)

Reviews and thoughts under the cut

Forest of Shadows by Erin Hunter (8/10)

After the lull that was Fire and Ice, this book picks up quite a bit, especially at the end. It still is so funny to me that this plot could be transplanted into a high fantasy novel and nothing would be out of place. There's forbidden romance, a major natural disaster, a tragic miscarriage, and a betrayal in pursuit of power. Not to mention the secret (aha get it because of the title) Fireheart discovers about Bluestar and some RiverClan cats. This book is a major turning point for the series as one major character will no longer be around as often and Tigerclaw has now officially made his move. Very fun, but also just not well-written enough for me to bump this past an 8.

Bonded by Thorns by Elizabeth Helen (9/10)

I have officially gotten Kindle Unlimited, and I picked this book up on a whim. I've seen some stuff about it on social media, and it was just so much fun. It is very much a fantasy romance with far more focus on the relationships than the plot or worldbuilding, but they definitely weren't lacking. It's clearly a Beauty and the Beast retelling (specifically the Disney version), but the addition of some magical shenanigans and an extra villain really freshen it up. Despite not being a very plot-heavy book, it's a great length that never really drags. A lot of fantasy romances tend to move very slowly, but this one didn't, and I really like it. Also, the love interests are distinct and quite complex. My one dislike lies in the main character, who is very much a typical protagonist for this genre. Easy to read through the eyes of but not exactly super compelling.

Woven by Gold by Elizabeth Helen (CR, 10%)

Since I enjoyed Bonded by Thorns so much, I immediately picked up the next one. I will say that the major problem introduced at the end of book one is almost immediately resolved, which is a little unsatisfying, but it did bring in some extra information and characters, so I'll let it slide. Kel is being so ridiculously thick it's verging on comical, but the other love interests are doing amazing.

The Wicked King by Holly Black (CR, 8%)

This book is my favorite of The Folk of the Air; Jude is in her element, scheming and running everything behind the scenes. I love fantasy politics, so I'm sure I'll love my reread just as much as I did the first time around. There's such clear urgency in this book from the first few chapters, it makes sure you have to continue.

Everblaze by Shannon Messenger (CR, 2%)

I've barely started this one, but I'm dead set on catching up on KotLC this summer. For now, I will say that I adore Sophie and Keefe.