I'm not sure why, but I had a great deal of trouble connecting with this book. The writing wasn't bad, some decent character voices, but it just flowed around me. Perhaps it was just a bit too YA for me. I don't think it was the teenage girl's perspective that was the problem - in the past I've very much enjoyed writers such as Joan Aiken's Jacobean books and Jane Gaskell, and was recently awed by NK Jemisin's debut. At first I thought it was just the mannerliness of the setting, an alternate Victoriana in which Britain is still connected to the continent, Celtic tribes still rule Northern Europe and glaciers extend over Scotland, Scandinavia and the Alps, but the book never grabbed me. 
 I was intrigued by the setting, but found I was constantly getting annoyed at the author's heavy handed way of showing that this was an alternate world ("However pleasant the summer may seem, the ice never truly rests; it only dozes through the long days of Maius, Junius, Julius and Augustus.") I couldn't help be reminded of the subtlety, elegance and vibrancy with which Philip Pullman created Lyra's Oxford, not rushing matters and simply laying the world out and slowly allowing the reader to notice the differences. I know that is an unfair comparison, like comparing Warhol to da Vinci or Lady Gaga to Mahler, but if I'd been more gripped by the story and the prose it wouldn't have mattered. (and, yes, i chose those comparisons deliberately; taste is subjective, and perhaps this just wasn't to my taste, as some people might consider Warhol a better artist than da Vinci. Although they would be idiots). 
 Had it not been a library book I think there was enough to intrigue me and I would have put my problems down with the book down to taste and put it aside for another time. As it was I had three runs at it before sticking with the book. Two stars seems harsh, but to be honest 'ok' is a more than adequate description.