Book Review: Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch

Snow Like Ashes

by Sara Raasch
Series: Snow Like Ashes #1
Published: October 14, 2014
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Format: eARC (432 pages)
Source: For Review

Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. Now, the Winterians’ only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been waiting for the opportunity to steal back Winter’s magic and rebuild the kingdom ever since.

Orphaned as an infant during Winter’s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee, raised by the Winterians’ general, Sir. Training to be a warrior—and desperately in love with her best friend, and future king, Mather — she would do anything to help her kingdom rise to power again.

So when scouts discover the location of the ancient locket that can restore Winter’s magic, Meira decides to go after it herself. Finally, she’s scaling towers, fighting enemy soldiers, and serving her kingdom just as she’s always dreamed she would. But the mission doesn’t go as planned, and Meira soon finds herself thrust into a world of evil magic and dangerous politics – and ultimately comes to realize that her destiny is not, never has been, her own.

The fantasy world that Snow Like Ashes is set in is the best and worst thing about this book.  The idea of seasons being a kingdom is pretty cool.  Some kingdoms have one season all the time and some kingdoms have all four seasons every year.  The Season Kingdoms and the “Rhythm” Kingdoms don’t like each other.  That’s a lot of kingdoms and weather to keep track of, which is where the love/hate relationship comes in.  The world is interesting and complex but difficult to figure out which made the narrative prone to info dumping at times.  Thankfully, the kingdoms and their cities had obvious names to help me out.  I liked the play on the names of calendar months for the capital cities – Jannuari, Abril, Oktuber, and Juli.  But going for the obvious made it feel a little cliche.  The people in the Autumn Kingdom had a Native American ethnicity.  The people of the Winter Kingdom had all white hair and blue eyes.  It’s fun and cheesy at the same time and I still can not figure out how I feel about it.

The magic system grew on me.  I did not like it at first.  From a logical standpoint, it seemed completely stupid to have magic reside in an object that can easily be stolen (see also: the entire conflict of this novel).  I wanted to tell the whole Winter Kingdom, “Duh.  That’s obviously a stupid idea.”  Many, many chapters later it’s explained why magic only resides in objects and I changed my mind about not liking it.  The nature of evil is portrayed through magic as feeding on itself and being about a choice between good and evil.  It was actually pretty interesting.  Although, there was one scene at the beginning that seemed like it was supposed to have a lot of shock value but since the rules of magic hadn’t been explained yet, I was not impressed.

The writing wasn’t the best I’ve read.  It had a few cliche sayings that pulled me out of the story and would sometimes tell me things I had already figured out.  Villain motivation is very important to me.  This villain fell into the category of wanting more power for no particular reason.  That is probably the least interesting motivation that a villain can have.  I mean, at least have a reason for all this power.  Maybe he’s always wanted all the things because he never had the things.  Please.  Something.  I kept wondering through the whole book what it was that he wanted.  They just called him “evil” the whole time.

Meira is a strong, spunky female lead.  I liked her character and reading about her.  She wants to be a soldier, not a princess.   As much as I liked Meira though, I loved Theron.  I thought he was the best character in the book.  He was so far from cliche that I don’t think Theron and cliche have ever met.  Theron says my favorite quote from the entire book:

“There will always be a THEY in your new life, Meira. THEY make decisions; THEY mold your future.  The trick is to find a way to still be YOU through it all.”

-Sara Raasch, Snow Like Ashes (Chapter 14)

Overall, this was a good epic fantasy with an interesting world (once I figured it out) full of fun characters but had a few too many cliche moments for me to completely love it.

Content Rating: Medium, for some violence that is mildly graphic.

This post contains affiliate links and I receive a small percentage of sales made through these links.  I received this book for review from the publisher, Harper Collins, in exchange for an honest review. I was not told what to say, I was not paid to write this review and all the opinions expressed are my own.  I read an Advanced Reading Copy for this review.