Tales of unicorns and dwarves aren’t typically the setting for a sappy love story. However, “Giants of the Frost” by Kim Wilkins, attempts to combine fantasy and love – and fails.

At its core, the story is about true love. And that would be fine if it were a Harlequin romance. But it’s a fantasy. It can be about anything. Saving the world, destroying the world, creating the world – anything. A love story doesn’t need a fantastical setting to work, and using something that isn’t needed is a waste. This is genrecide.

Love without conflict does not make a worthwhile story. For those of you who will throw copies of “Romeo and Juliet” in my face, you’ll be devastated to know that I think it’s revolting.

Basically, this is what the novel consists of: Victoria is a meteorologist and Vidar is a Norse god. Odin, Vidar’s dad, isn’t too keen on the two hooking up. Sparks fly, fireworks go off, jealousy flares and a hag tries to kill everyone.

Victoria and Vidar had no reason for falling in love other than love at first sight, which is paltry and cliche. Any two-bit fan fiction writer uses that as a fallback, so why is a reputable author degrading herself with it?

Wilkins’s writing is good in itself. She has fine description, use of dialogue, mostly believable characters and appears to have thoroughly researched her topics. However, she threw in a number of substandard technical errors.

Depending on which character is the center of attention, Wilkins changed from third-person narration to first-person. Any change in narration distracts the reader, which is why it isn’t done and shouldn’t be done. Minus half a star.

The only thing which redeems the switch is it notifies the reader of which character is involved without having to mention names. Of course, Wilkins ruins this by putting one of Vidar’s sections in first-person, while the rest of the time he’s in third. This, after the reader is accustomed to the defined narrators the author established, only confuses and annoys the reader.

I might have taken less offense at her error in judgment, but Vidar spoke in the same voice as the third-person narrator, not as he would have normally. No one, not even a god, speaks like a third-person narrator.

Of course, what really made me mad was that he talked for three straight chapters, and all of it was exposition. If that much back story needs to be given, then the book isn’t starting in the right spot.

There were also problems with the characters. Some characters were one-dimensional when they should have been rounded. It’s never a good sign when background characters are more interesting than main characters. That’s a signal that the author is telling the wrong person’s story.

When using gods as characters, they must have dimension, otherwise they are no more than the bogeyman or the tooth fairies. And that is true no matter if the character is main, secondary or background. Too many immortals in this book were lifeless and cardboard.

The narration and dialogue in parts were too flowery. It smacked of Tolkien’s high language or Victorian poetry. It’s distracting to readers and far too reminiscent of gushing romance and chick flicks.

The combination of Norse myth and meteorology was original, but it wasn’t used to its full potential. Wilkins had the makings of an epic, but she didn’t do anything with them. There were opportunities for much more fascinating storylines, but they weren’t acted on.

The best part of “Giants of the Frost” was the Norse lore. Other than that, it felt like a waste of my time. The hooks and the possibilities were there, but nothing was backing them up.

To reiterate my rant from the beginning: Love should be a subplot – not the focus – of a novel. Bah humbug.