Breadcrumbs

“It was the sort of snowfall that, if there were any magic to be had in the world, would make it come out. And magic did come out. But not the kind you were expecting.”

While Anne Ursu writes most of the novel in the third-person perspective, she uses the second-person point of view during some passages to provide insights about supernatural figures and occurrences. These direct addresses to the reader break the fourth wall, mirroring the novel’s disruption of the line between fiction and reality. Snow serves as a motif for The Intersection of Reality and Fantasy in Shaping Personal Identity. The ominous wording that the snowfall brings “not the kind of magic you were expecting” foreshadows the witch’s arrival and Jack’s subsequent disappearance.

“Something stirred inside her, some urge to plunge into the new white world and see what it had to offer. It was like she’d walked out of a dusty old wardrobe and found Narnia.”

Ursu includes allusions to famous middle-grade fantasy novels throughout the story. In this passage, the references to “a dusty old wardrobe” and Narnia allude to C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This allusion captures the protagonist’s feeling of joy and possibility as she admires the beautiful snowy day while also hinting at the dangers to come. Just as, in Lewis’s novel, the Pevensie siblings contend against the cruel White Witch, Hazel faces a similar witch and other hazards on her own journey.