The Snow Queen is more or less a straightforward third-person narrative, although the author occasionally uses italics to set off her characters' thoughts from the narrative.

Vinge says in the foreword that The Snow Queen is an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same name. She also acknowledges a debt to Robert Graves's The White Goddess (1948). There is also an overlay of Celtic mythology, mostly evidenced in the names of some of the characters: Arienrhod, Blodwed, and Herne among others. The basic plot is a twist on the usual rescue of a damsel in distress by the fair young knight. In this case the evil ruler is a woman, not a man, who figuratively locks up a young man, not a young woman, in her fairy tale castle.

The rescuer is the princess, not a prince. All the sub-plots are basic...