German: Frostkuss. Mythos Academy I, trans. Vanessa Lamatsch, München: Piper, 2012.

Prequels in Mythos Academy Series:

• First Frost (0.5 Prequel E-Story) (2011)

Sequels in Mythos Academy Series:

• Kiss of Frost (Book 2) (2011).
• Halloween Frost (E-Novella 2.5).
• Dark Frost (Book 3) (2012).
• Crimson Frost (Book 4) (2012).
• Spartan Frost (E-Novella 4.5) (2013).
• Midnight Frost (Book 5) (2013).
• Killer Frost (Book 6) (2014).

Mythos Academy spinoff series:

• Spartan Heart (Colorado 1) (2017)
• Spartan Promise (Colorado 2) (2019)
• Spartan Destiny (Colorado 3) (forthcoming)

This is the first volume of the Mythos Academy series of paranormal fantasy novels for young readers. After the untimely death of her parents, seventeen year old Gwen(dolyn) Frost attends the so called Mythos Academy, a boarding school for teenagers who descend from mythical nations, gods, and warrior races. There she is trained as a future powerful fighter against Loki, the Nordic god of chaos, and his thugs called the Cutter, who help him to get control over the world. Gwen owns a powerful gift, called the "gypsy gift" (psychometrics), which enables her to know everything about an item that she has touched. 

One day, the corpse of an arrogant school-friend called Jasmine is discovered. Jasmine was a Valkyrie, a Nordic battle-woman, who takes the fallen fighters to Valhalla. Together with the good-looking, but at first unapproachable Spartan boy Logan, Gwen investigates the reasons of her death. In due course it is revealed that Jasmine has only pretended to be dead in order to divert attention from the theft of a very precious artefact that she committed. She attacks Gwen and Logan with the help of a dangerous panther, but they manage to defeat her. Because of this triumph, Nike, the goddess of victory and one of the most powerful teachers at the academy, receives Gwen into her entourage. In this group Gwen gets special training in winning difficult fights. 

In this paranormal fantasy, classical myths are intertwined with Nordic myths and Greek history. Gwen is a complicated hybrid figure, a cross between a school girl, a Greek goddess of victory, and a seer. Her character is inspired by a Greek goddess and a Greek priest of Apollo. The boy Logan, alongside whom she fights against the dark side, is a Spartan soldier with equipment from 500 B.C., when Sparta fought against the Persian invaders. As an antagonist, Loki, the Nordic god of Chaos, is keen to destroy the Greek Pantheon, because the gods have exiled him. Elements from different mythical traditions are eclectically combined in a typically postmodern way. These mythical elements serve merely as the background against which to describe a hesitant teenager searching for her own identity and her first love. When she is with other teenagers who are blessed with superpowers, she makes new friends. Her love interest Logan has the same ancient background, because they both have Greco-Roman roots. She feels at ease at the Mythos Academy where there are exotic and unusual students. After acquiring better fighting skills and defeating Jasmine, she becomes a real heroine and is able to detect injustice. The characters in the book are problematic as role models, because there, fighting is an accepted way of solving problems and conflicts. The book suggests that extraordinary teenagers should not be educated at ordinary schools. They have to be among themselves to truly develop. This modern concept of inclusion of special needs children in school with traditional curriculum does not apply here entirely because the student at Mythos Academy have no learning disabilities but rather display exceptional abilities.

Janka, Markus and Michael Stierstorfer, eds., Verjüngte Antike. Griechisch-römische Mythologie und Historie in zeitgenössischen Kinder- und Jugendmedien, Heidelberg: Winter, 2017.

Stierstorfer, Michael, Antike Mythologie in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Gegenwart. Unsterbliche Götter- und Heldengeschichten? [Ancient Mythology in Contemporary Children’s Literature. Immortal Stories of Gods and Heroes?] Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017.