Summer's signing off
Buy used
£79.43
£2.80 delivery 5 - 11 August. Details
Used: Good | Details
Sold by rbmbooks
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: Used, good: average wear, reasonable shape, may have limited notes and/or highlighting. Ships from abroad. Delivered in 10-12 business days. Money-back guarantee.
Only 1 left in stock.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the authors

Marilyn Fitschen
Follow
John Bellairs
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Face in the Frost Mass Market Paperback – 1 July 1984

by John Bellairs (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 552 ratings
Previous slide of product details
  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Ace Books
  3. Publication date
    1 July 1984
  4. Dimensions
    17.78 x 2.54 x 12.7 cm
  5. ISBN-10
    0441225306
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0441225309
Next slide of product details
Save 15% on Baby Einstein

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ace Books
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 1 July 1984
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0441225306
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0441225309
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 227 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17.78 x 2.54 x 12.7 cm
  • Best Sellers Rank: 49,993 in Fantasy (Books)
  • Customer reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars 552 ratings

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Previous page
  1. Marilyn Fitschen

    Marilyn Fitschen

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

    See more on the author's page
  2. John Bellairs

    John Bellairs

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

    See more on the author's page
Next page

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
552 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book's pacing positive, with one describing it as a whimsical children's novel. They appreciate its readability, with one customer noting it's a perfectly satisfying read for adults.

Select to learn more

PacingReadability
4 customers mention ‘Pacing’4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with one describing it as a whimsical children's novel, while another notes how the splendid imagery greatly enhances the simple tale.

"...It is intensely evocative. It has a great lightness of touch and a good eye for telling detail...." Read more

"...This whimsical tone is light-hearted without ever quite making it to funny, and was a tad distracting to this reader...." Read more

"The face in the frost is a curious book, with the whimsy of a children's novel while being decidely adult...." Read more

"...of a conflict between good and evil wizards, it's set against a charming and original background, with highly engaging and frequently comic..." Read more

4 customers mention ‘Readability’4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book highly engaging, with one customer describing it as a perfectly satisfying read for adults.

"...this admirable tapestry of growing supernatural menace, the tale is well worth reading." Read more

"The face in the frost is a curious book, with the whimsy of a children's novel while being decidely adult...." Read more

"...it's set against a charming and original background, with highly engaging and frequently comic characters...." Read more

"Suprising, inventive and very short..." Read more

Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • wolf
    5.0 out of 5 stars Suprising, inventive and very short
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 December 2007
    Verified Purchase
    Bellairs appears to have written mainly children's fiction. This was his one outing with adult fantasy. It features the adventures of two wizards - Prospero (who shares only his name with Shakespeare's) and Roger Bacon. They embark on a quest to discover who is sending sorcerous warnings to and attacks at Prospero and to find a warping evil book. They travel accross a cod-medieval world, similar to a jumbled up historic Britain.

    So far, so conventional. Where it exceeds these standard fantasy tropes is in Bellairs writing. It is intensely evocative. It has a great lightness of touch and a good eye for telling detail. As a result the book can change in tone from light whimsy to worrying horror from paragraph to paragraph.

    The result is something quite unusual - particularly for anyone used to reading recent modern fantasy. We have a book without any of the strained for significance of heroic fantasy, none of its dully mournful and dutiful heroes, no threat of crashing empires and armies on the march. Instead we have two - slightly silly but human - old men engaged on a journey to set things right again against a foe that might well be more powerful than them. Although the book was Bellairs response to reading Lord of the Rings, Prospero owes more to T. H. White's Merlin than Tolkein's Gandalf. And the book is very slim - you could read it in afternoon.

    Worth picking up.
    3 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Jason Mills
    3.0 out of 5 stars Splendid imagery greatly lifts the simple tale.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 August 2012
    Verified Purchase
    An odd confection. Two wizardly chums are subjected to magical attacks and journey off together to confront their mysterious enemy. Prospero (not that one) and Roger Bacon (yes, that one?) are wizards who hang around in the North and South Kingdoms, but also have access to the lands and history of Earth we are familiar with. Thus the book is peppered with indulgent anachronisms - Prospero tells his talking mirror to shut up and watch some late-night movies, for instance. This whimsical tone is light-hearted without ever quite making it to funny, and was a tad distracting to this reader. I also lost track of the plot a little - not that it's that complicated, but it is a little buried under the wonders, and I spent too long over this short book! My final complaint is that, not knowing the rules and constraints of magic in the depicted world, events appeared to me arbitrary and sometimes unsatisfying.

    However, above all that is the nature of the enchantment preying on our heroes. Here the author's imagination shines, depicting endless subtle transformations and spooky distortions in the world, such as the face that seems to appear in thawing frost on villagers' window-panes, or the shifting cloak hung in Prospero's cellar. The sense of the entire land becoming ever more bewitched and uncertain is palpable and chilling, reminding me of Algernon Blackwood's stories. For this admirable tapestry of growing supernatural menace, the tale is well worth reading.
    2 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Manly Reading
    3.0 out of 5 stars Whimsical adult fantasy
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 December 2010
    Verified Purchase
    The face in the frost is a curious book, with the whimsy of a children's novel while being decidely adult. It's a short book - the adventure of a couple of wizards in a fantasy world, as they search for an old book, try to work out who is trying to kill them, any why. Prospero (no, not that one the book tells us) and Roger Bacon (but yes, apparently that one) set off together, but are separated numerous times. Mixed in with all this is an old antogonist, who has laid various traps for our heroes - and some of the episodes are chilling indeed.

    Its not a truly great story, and struggles to decide how serious it is, but ends strongly and is worth reading, especially as it will not require much time or devotion to finish, and there is no sequel or series to commit to. As a last word, the old Ace edition paperback I have is illustrated in black and white - which seems odd these days, but does not hurt the story at all.
    3 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars A lost classic.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 August 2012
    Verified Purchase
    A Face in the Frost is an almost forgotten fantasy classic, out of print for decades but now resurrected in e-book form by those nice people at SF Gateway. The story of a conflict between good and evil wizards, it's set against a charming and original background, with highly engaging and frequently comic characters. The horror scenes of black magic have a genuinely unsettling nightmare quality. It may be marketed as a Yound Adult novel but it's a perfectly satisfying read for adults as well.

    A great little book of the sort they just don't seem to write any more, and an absolutely flawless transfer to e-book, which is something you can't always say with the SF Gateway output, unfortunately.
    3 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Kurt A. Johnson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully unique
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 November 2003
    Prospero, an eccentric wizard living in the Southern Kingdom, has begun to experience something new to him, fear. Nightmares visit him, unearthly shadows dance upon his walls, and dreadful apparitions accost him. When his friend, Roger Bacon, returns from England with shocking news about an eldritch book, he realizes that someone is gaining great power, and that someone wants Prospero dead. And so, Prospero and Roger set off on a quest to unravel the mystery and stop someone who may now be the most powerful wizard in the world.
    This book contains one of the most wonderfully unique stories I have every read! It is gothic horror, but one where the protagonist is a wizard. Unlike the wizards presented in many stories however, Prospero often finds that his powers do not help him, and that he must confront the horrors or flee from them, the same as any other man. Through it all, the story portrays a gentle humor that makes it such wonderful reading.
    I really enjoyed the black-and-white illustrations provided by Marilyn Fitschen (though this may be only in certain editions), their stark nature adds greatly to this suspense-filled story. I highly recommend this story to any fan of fantasy literature, or player of D&D!
    8 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • ealovitt
    5.0 out of 5 stars Prospero, but not the one you are thinking of
    Reviewed in the United States on 21 February 2002
    Verified Purchase
    "The Face In The Frost" is a richly imaginative tale of two wizards, Prospero (not the one you're thinking of) and Roger Bacon, who must overcome a third wizard, the evil Melichus before he destroys them, and a lot of other folks as well.
    Even if you think you've heard this story before, you've never come across a variation like this one. The closest analogue that I can come up with is "Howl's Moving Castle" for its eccentricity, but 'Face' outdoes 'Howl' in this respect as well as in its fear quotient. The scary scenes approach M.R. James in intensity, and they are always preceded by migraine-like aura. Prospero senses that something is slightly off about the inn where he is staying. He is still trying to figure out what is bothering him at four in the morning:
    "Strange thoughts began to come to him now: locked boxes and empty rooms. Four dials and a black hole. Four cards and a blank. And a dead sound on the stroke of four. Why did that mirror bother him?
    "Quietly, Prospero got dressed, took his staff from the corner, and opened the door of his room. The hall was dark and silent...He lit [a candle] and tiptoed down the stairs to the place where the mirror hung. Prospero stared and felt a chill pass through his body. The mirror showed nothing-not his face, not his candle, not the wall behind him. All he saw was a black glassy surface."
    Prospero explores further and finds his landlady standing fully-clothed in her room, with a butcher knife in her hand. "In her slowly rising head were two black holes. Prospero saw in his mind a doll that had terrified him when he was a child. The eyes had rattled in the china skull. Now the woman's voice, mechanical and heavy: "Why don't you sleep? Go to sleep." Her mouth opened wide, impossibly wide, and then the whole face stretched and writhed and yawned in the faint light."
    Prospero manages to escape the inn and town that were nothing more than an elaborate trap set up by Melichus to destroy him. He is reunited with his friend, Roger Bacon and they continue on their quest to find and destroy Melichus's evil magic.
    There are delightfully eccentric set-pieces in 'Face:' a king who builds elaborate clock-works of the universe; a monk who collects strange plants; a talking mirror that divulges scores from a 1943 Cubs-Giants baseball game. I suspect the author wove his fantasy out of migraines, nightmares, and a love of mechanical oddities and spells that turn tomatoes into squishy red carriages. Prospero himself has a "cherrywood bedstead with a bassoon carved into one of the fat headposts, so that it could be played as you lay in bed and meditated...On a shelf over the experiment table was the inevitable skull, which the wizard put there to remind him of death, though it usually reminded him that he needed to go to the dentist."
    I'd better put an end to this review before I quote the whole book. It's so good, it pulls me in every time I open it---Enchanting, in the original sense of the word, and frightening, too.
    Report
  • P A DEWS THOMSON
    4.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric, Lively
    Reviewed in Australia on 15 November 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Creates and maintains an atmosphere of creeping dread - very Lovecraftian - while also having some evocative descriptions and excellent characters.
    Report
  • 兎の国
    5.0 out of 5 stars 魔法使い好きにはたまらない！
    Reviewed in Japan on 21 February 2008
    Verified Purchase
    魔法使いの家、食べ物、魔法の小道具、そしてもちろん魔法使いその人や魔法の数々が満載のとても楽しい本です。疲れた頭を休めるのにもってこい。ベレアーズは子供が主人公のファンタジーも書いていますが、これは大人しか出てきません。でも中学生くらいからなら読めるかな。楽しいですよ。お勧めです！
    Report
  • West Mountain
    5.0 out of 5 stars An enjoyable grown-up fantasy novel from the author of "The House With a Clock in Its Walls"
    Reviewed in Canada on 3 April 2019
    Verified Purchase
    When I was trying to explain to younger friends what wizards were like before Harry Potter and Discworld, John Bellairs is one of the writers who came to mind. Like Lewis's Uncle Jonathan in the "House With a Clock" series, the Prospero in this book (not the one you are thinking of, as the author is quick to specify), is much closer to TH White's Merlin in terms of his knowledge of 20th century pop culture than the enchanters of Middle Earth or Earthsea. I didn't get to read this book until recently, and I was not disappointed ... it's creepy, off-the-wall, and poignant by turns. What a pity John Bellairs died before writing much more about the mysterious Dolphin Cross and the adventures of Prospero and Roger Bacon (and of course, the unforgettable snarkiness of Prospero's magic mirror).
    Report
  • Dawn
    4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
    Reviewed in Canada on 8 May 2021
    Verified Purchase
    The descriptive writing and creativity is simply brilliant, however the story does lack the sense of clarity and purpose needed to fully draw you in and captivate readers. I loved the experience of reading this, but was glad the story was short.
    Report