I’d like to start off this review by saying that aside from simply being in the mood to read some good fantasy books lately, one of the things that really drew me to Sara Raasch’s Snow Like Ashes trilogy is the fact that I have heard a lot of people compare the Snow Like Ashes trilogy to the TV show Game of Thrones. That being said, while I’ve only read A Game of Thrones, which is the first book in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series that serves as the source material for Game of Thrones; I was never expecting the quality of Raasch’s writing to be on the same level as George R. R. Martin’s writing, and it definitely isn’t. That being said, I still really loved Snow Like Ashes. As far as I’m concerned, the quality of Raasch’s writing for this book is definitely superior to the quality of the writing for quite a few YA books that are out there, which is something that I’ll talk about throughout this review.
As for my thoughts on people likening the Snow Like Ashes trilogy to Game of Thrones, it’s easy for me to see why people are making that comparison in terms of the premise of the Snow Like Ashes trilogy, since it contains elements of fantasy; along with the fact that the world that this trilogy takes place in, Primoria, is divided into eight different kingdoms. Four of the kingdoms are referred to as “season kingdoms”, which stay the same season all year long, and four “rhythm kingdoms”, which cycle through the four seasons of the year like normal. I have to admit that while I was able to understand and follow the crucial aspects of the backstory that Raasch gave in the book, which serves as set up for the premise of the series as I was reading the book; it’s a little challenging for me to summarize all of the backstory effectively, so I’ve included an excerpt from bookseriesrecaps.com’s page on Snow Like Ashes, which explains some of the backstory that’s important to know about the series:
Background: Each of the kingdoms of Primoria has a magic conduit that only works for the royal family. The royal family is either female or male line based. With these conduits they can create a plentiful harvest, make people better soldiers, provide health, or even force their people to obey (the king of Spring, Angra, uses his magic to enhance anything bad or evil rather than the betterment of his kingdom). These conduits were created from a giant ball of magic that is somewhere beneath the season kingdoms (to which the entrance has been lost). They are in the form of things like a locket, a ring, a dagger.
Sixteen years ago, the kingdom of Winter was attacked by the land of Spring. Only a few Winterians managed to escape and the rest were killed or enslaved. Their leader, Queen Hannah, was killed and their conduit, in the form of a locket, was broken in two. One half is kept around Angra’s neck and the other is kept on the move. Those few Winter refugees have been in hiding ever since.
As much as I loved this book, and I’m really excited to read the rest of the trilogy, when it comes to people likening the series to Game of Thrones, I would sadly have to describe this book as being “Game of Thrones: Lite”. Don’t get me wrong, I feel like the overall premise of the Snow Like Ashes trilogy is very ambitious, especially coming from a first-time author. However, as good as I thought Raasch’s writing for this book was, especially when I compare it to my thoughts on a lot of the other YA book series out there, I feel like this book doesn’t truly live of up to its potential. If I had to say what this book’s biggest flaw is, it would be Raasch’s execution of the world building for the series. Raasch has clearly created a very complex and detailed concept for a trilogy of books and a world for the characters to live in, and yet as I was reading Snow Like Ashes, I felt like she was barely scratching the surface of that world. I think that’s a real shame, because I feel like the overall premise of the series is a gold mine for some really good storytelling.
Having read a lot of fantasy books, and having watched a lot of fantasy oriented TV shows, I’ve learned that it’s definitely important for people to be patient and give stories that are a part of the fantasy genre time to unfold; which is why I was really trying to be patient with this book as I was reading it. After all, this is only the first book in a trilogy of books. That being said, I was definitely still disappointed by the lack of world building in this book, since Raasch only focused on the kingdoms of Winter, Cordell, and to a very small extent, the kingdom of Spring. I’m really hoping that she’ll develop the other five kingdoms at least a little bit in Ice Like Fire and Frost Like Night. For now, I’ve just been repeatedly asking myself why Sara Raasch made a point of having the world of Primoria consist of eight different kingdoms if she’s only going to explore two of those kingdoms somewhat thoroughly. I’m still really trying to be patient with this series for the time being, though, since I did love this book.
When it comes to my thoughts on the main character, Meira, I really love her for the most part. It was really great to see Raasch write Meira as a character who wasn’t wishy-washy and a damsel in distress, who constantly needed to be saved. I love that Raasch portrayed Meira as being a girl that really wanted to help the other Winterians in their quest to find both halves of their kingdom’s conduit, which was a locket; instead of portraying Meira as being a person who was constantly sitting on the sidelines while other people, perhaps men, did all of the work to find both halves of the locket. Sure, Meira definitely faced some resistance from the other Winterians, namely her adoptive father, “Sir”, at first when she made it clear that she wanted to be the one to go look for the locket. Ultimately, she got to do that, and she succeeded in finding the first half of the locket fairly early on in the book. Another thing that I really like about Meira is the fact that Raasch didn’t portray her as somebody who was constantly fixating on some guy, or possibly more than one guy.
While I liked Meira for the most part, she definitely got on my nerves at times early on in the book. I just thought it was very irritating that she seemed to be really down on herself about the fact that she had grown up with Sir basically serving as her adoptive father. Meira acted like raising her was something that had been forced on Sir. While I can understand that somebody might have some insecurities about being adopted, it still really frustrated me that Meira never seemed to consider the possibility that Sir had most likely been given at least some say in regards to whether or not he was actually willing to raise her; if it wasn’t a decision that he had made on a completely voluntary basis. Personally, I really wish that Raasch had had Meira and Sir have a conversation at some point in the book where they talked about Meira’s insecurities, and Sir’s decision to take her in and raise her. Sadly, Rasch didn’t do that. Thankfully, Raasch did at least pretty much stop making Meira out to be a girl who was constantly down on herself in regards to her relationship with Sir fairly early on in the book.
As much as I ultimately grew to love Meira as a character, and as much as I loved this book, I really feel like Snow Like Ashes would have been even better if the book had been an ensemble story. I think that making the Snow Like Ashes trilogy an ensemble story, similar to how Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series is an ensemble story, really would have helped to take full advantage of the trilogy’s premise. In my opinion, making the Snow Like Ashes trilogy an ensemble story that focused on characters from several of the eight kingdoms really could have helped give the series a more global feel to it, and it really could have helped in terms of broadening the scope of the series. By writing the book solely from Meira’s point of view and pretty much only focusing on the Winterians like she did, Raasch really limited herself in terms of what she was able to actually do with the series’ premise. What I think Raasch should have done is alternate between Meira’s point of view, and at least three other characters’ points of view that came from the other kingdoms throughout the book.
I don’t think it would work very well if Raasch had included Meira’s point of view, along with the points of view of at least one character from each of the seven other kingdoms. However, I think she could have easily portrayed some of the other kingdoms as living a nomadic way of life like she did with the Winterians and having them travel to Cordell. If Raasch had included three other characters’ points of view along with Meira’s, she could have introduced characters from the four other kingdoms that weren’t being represented by a P.O.V. character by having the P.O.V. characters encounter people from the kingdoms that weren’t being represented by a P.O.V. character during their travels. As the series progressed in Ice Like Fire and Frost Like Night, Raasch could have had the various characters and whatever storylines she did with those characters slowly converge and connect with each other by the end of the trilogy. I’m aware of the fact that Raasch introduces more character’s points of view in both Ice Like Fire and Frost Like Night, but I’m still feeling rather skeptical about how much that’s going to help the issues that this series seems to have with world building. However, as I said earlier, I’m really trying to be patient with this series and reserve judgment until after I’ve read Ice Like Fire and Frost Like Night.
The fact that I started to find Raasch’s execution of the world building for the series rather disappointing fairly early on in the book caused me to go from thinking that Snow Like Ashes was a really great book, to thinking that it was probably going to end up either being a good, but not great, book, or a book that was simply okay for a small portion of the book. Plus, Snow Like Ashes admittedly started to make me feel like I was falling into a reading slump when it came to this book after I had read the first four or five, maybe six, chapters of the book. However, a major turning point in Snow Like Ashes for me personally in terms of my overall enjoyment of the book was the end of chapter ten when Meira finds out that Sir had arranged a marriage alliance between the people of Winter and Cordell; which would involve her marrying Theron.
While I was still disappointed by the book’s lack of world building, Meira finding out that Sir and the other Winterians were expecting her to marry Theron really helped reinvigorate my enjoyment of the book, and I found it easier to look past a lot of the complaints that I had about the book after that. Even though this book consists of a variety of elements that feel reminiscent of Game of Thrones, Meira’s reaction to finding out that Sir and the other Winterians were expecting her to marry Theron was definitely the point in the story where I started to feel like Snow Like Ashes actually deserves to be likened to Game of Thrones. Maybe people will disagree with me, but Meira’s reaction to finding out that she was expected to marry Theron, along with the ending of the book, made it so that Meira reminded me a lot of Daenerys Targaryen in some ways. For the record, Daenerys is one of my favorite characters in both the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and on the show Game of Thrones, so Meira reminding me of Daenerys to a certain extent subsequently led me to starting to really love Meira as a character.
While I’m usually a huge fan of the romance genre and books where romance is at least one aspect of the plot, one thing that I really liked about Snow Like Ashes and thought was rather refreshing about the book is the fact that while Raasch occasionally hinted at a Mather/Meira/Theron love triangle throughout the book; it wasn’t something that Raasch dwelled on. It was a rather refreshing change of the pace to read a YA book where a love triangle or a romance between just two of the main characters isn’t one of the main driving forces of the book’s plot. Sometimes I feel like authors seem to think that YA books are required to have the plot of their books involve a love a triangle or a romance between just two of the characters, and that romance needs to be a key aspect of the book; so it was great to see Raasch not follow that trend in this book.
That being said, when it comes to my thoughts on the Mather/Meira/Theron love triangle, I’m definitely team Theron all the way. While I don’t hate Mather, he’s definitely my least favorite character in the book. Mather just comes across as being incredibly bland compared to Theron and all of the other characters that are featured in the book. Plus, I felt like Mather came across as being a bit too angst-ridden at times for my taste. Sure, he was definitely in a difficult position with the expectations that had been placed on him by the other Winterians, which I thought was kind of sad; but at the same time, Theron was also in somewhat of a difficult position in terms of the expectations that had been placed on him by his kingdom; and yet he came across to me as being at least a little bit more well adjusted than Mather did.
Despite the fact that Meira and Mather have apparently known each other for many years, their relationship honestly felt a little forced in my opinion; whereas the relationship between Meira and Theron felt much more natural and organic to me. Plus, I thought Meira and Theron came across as having more chemistry with each other than I thought Meira and Mather had with each other. I don’t know whether or not it was intentional on Raasch’s part, or it’s simply my own perception of the Mather/Meira/Theron love triangle; but I think it’s rather interesting and kind of ironic that Meira’s relationship with Mather felt somewhat forced compared to her relationship with Theron, who she was being forced to marry. Sure, the whole marriage alliance ended up getting called off, but I still think it’s rather interesting that Meira and Theron’s relationship felt much more natural and organic than Meira’s relationship with Mather did. As for my thoughts on Theron as an individual character, I really loved him a lot. I thought he was a very interesting character with a really interesting backstory; which is why I think Theron stands out a lot more as a character compared to Mather.
When it comes to my thoughts on Angra being the villain of the series, I felt like he came across as being a rather one-note villain and a character that was definitely underdeveloped; and yet one recurring thought that I had as I was reading Snow Like Ashes was that I still thought he was a much more intriguing villain than I thought Queen Levana from Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series was. As much as I love the Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana pretty much always came across as being a rather one-note and boring villain. Even after reading Fairest: Levana’s Story, I still thought that she was a character that lacked depth, especially since Levana was a rather self-centered and terrible person, even before she truly became the Evil Queen. Levana ultimately came across to me as being a poorly written version of Regina/The Evil Queen from the TV show Once Upon a Time.
When it comes to Angra, I definitely have a lot of questions about his backstory that I really hope Raasch explores and answers those questions in Ice Like Fire and Frost Like Night; namely, was Angra always a bad person, or did he used to be a good person who was corrupted in some way and gradually became evil over time? Plus, since Raasch made a point of establishing that Angra appears to not have aged in the years that have passed since people last saw him, I really want to know how that’s possible. If I had to guess, I’m guessing that Angra must have access to some form of magic that has made him immortal. However, I can definitely live with Raasch not really answering any of the questions that I have about Angra in this book since she really seemed to be trying to portray Angra as somebody who had a lot of mystery surrounding him; making it so Meira and the other Winterians didn’t know very much about him. That element of mystery surrounding Angra is definitely what made him such an intriguing character to me, even though I thought he kind of came across as being a one-note villain. Ultimately, Raasch’s execution of Angra being the villain of the Snow Like Ashes trilogy is one aspect of the series that I currently think is superior to Marissa Meyer’s writing for Queen Levana and Levana being the villain of the Lunar Chronicles.
One of Snow Like Ashes’ greatest strengths, which in my opinion makes it superior to both the book Divergent by Veronica Roth, and the first book in Gena Showalter’s Everlife series, Firstlife, is the overall pacing and structure of the plot. Raasch really surprised me quite a few times as I was reading this book by having certain things that I would normally expect to happen much further into a book like this, happened much earlier in Snow Like Ashes. For starters, I was really surprised when Meira found the first half of Hannah’s locket, which was the Winterian’s conduit, pretty early on the book. In retrospect, I feel like it should have occurred to me that there was most likely going to be some twist regarding Hannah’s locket being Winter’s conduit, but it honestly didn’t occur to me until the twist about Winter’s conduit was actually revealed towards the end of the book. Raasch definitely deserves kudos for surprising me when it comes to that aspect of the book. Admittedly, I was also kind of surprised that Meira’s first confrontation with Angra took place when it did. That’s something that I would typically expect to happen towards the end of a fantasy book like this. Ultimately, I thought that Raasch did a great job of having those two events occur much earlier in the book than I would usually expect them to in a book like Snow Like Ashes without having the plot of the book ultimately peter out, or suffer in any way.
Personally, Veronica Roth’s writing for Divergent made the plot and the book’s sense of direction feel incredibly repetitive to me, especially when it came to how much emphasis Roth put on the whole training process that Tris and all of the other Dauntless initiates went through. As I was reading Divergent, the strong emphasis on Tris’ training as a Dauntless initiate really made me feel like the plot of the book was constantly just going around and around in a circle; whereas the plot of Snow Like Ashes was consistently moving forward and never felt repetitive to me. The repetitive nature of the plot of Divergent is one of the main things that led to me having very mixed feelings about the book, and left me really being on the fence about whether or not I wanted to continue with the series. That being said, I’ve definitely leaned closer towards deciding to at least reading the second book in the Divergent series, Insurgent, to see if I like it more, or at least as much as I liked Divergent. If I do end up reading Insurgent, and I like it more, or at least as much as I liked Divergent, then I’ll probably go ahead and read the rest of the series, but I digress.
As I was reading Snow Like Ashes, I also found myself thinking about the first book in Gena Showalter’s Everlife series, Firstlife, and how despite the fact that I really liked that book, and I’m anxiously waiting for the second book the series, Lifeblood, to be released; I ultimately had a lot of issues with the overall pacing of the plot of Firstlife. While I really appreciate that there was a lot of action in Firstlife, I thought that there was too much action crammed into the plot, and the overall pacing of the plot was way too rushed for the most part in my opinion. There was definitely an abundance of action in Firstlife, to the point where there was a serious lack of slow, quiet moments between the characters that gave the characters as individuals and the relationships between the characters a chance to really develop. Snow Like Ashes, on the other hand, is in my opinion superior to Firstlife in the sense that it has a great balance of action that can help keep the readers engaged in the story; while also allowing for some great moments between the characters by having the action slow down enough at times so the characters can just interact with each other. The great balance of action and quiet moments in Snow Like Ashes ultimately really helps to provide some good development in regards to individual character development as well.
One last nitpick that I have with Snow Like Ashes, which to be fair to Sara Raasch is a complaint that I also have with various other YA books that I’ve read, is the fake swearing that’s featured throughout the book. What I mean by “fake swearing” is that it’s established early on that the phrases “Snow Above” and “Golden Leaves” are considered obscenities in the book. I don’t know exactly why authors are doing this, but based on my experiences with reading some of the more recently released YA books that are out there, it seems to be a new trend for authors to take words that are perfectly appropriate words to use in everyday language, and refer to them as being obscenities; particularly in books that are a part of the fantasy sub-genre of YA books.
Another example of this that I can think of would be the fact that in the aforementioned book, Firstlife, the word “Zero” is described as being a swear word. To be fair to Showalter, I actually thought it was kind of cute at first, and it felt somewhat fitting that the main character of the book, Tenley “Ten” Lockwood, used the word “Zero” as an obscenity since the name she went by is a number, and she was also kind of obsessed with numbers. However, Ten using “Zero” as an obscenity eventually got really old, and instead of thinking that it was cute that she did that, I just started to think it was really annoying. It honestly made her seem rather childish in my eyes after a while. When it comes to Raasch’s choice of fake obscenities in Snow Like Ashes, I thought they were rather ridiculous and annoying right from the start.
I don’t know if YA authors are trying to be cool by having their characters “swear” in their books, but at the same time they’re trying to not offend anybody (Most likely the parents of their readers), so they decide to take words that are perfectly normal and appropriate to use in everyday language, and refer to them as being obscenities in their books. In my opinion, it just makes characters in YA books and the writing for YA books in general, seem rather childish and annoying to have the characters use fake swear words. I really wish that YA authors would stop trying to make fake swearing a thing in YA books.
One last thing that I think is pretty cool about Snow Like Ashes is the fact that Raasch included a map of Primoria at the beginning of the book, which I’ve included down below. I always love it when books within the fantasy genre include things like a map in the book, because I think it’s a great way to give the readers an idea of what layout of the world that a book series takes place in looks like. Jordan Saia is the person who drew the map, and I definitely think that Saia did a great job on the overall design and artwork for the map, because it looks great.
All things considered, while I definitely have some issues with Sara Raasch’s execution of the world building, or rather the lack of world building in Snow Like Ashes; I still really love this book a lot. In my opinion, the quality of Raasch’s writing is still superior to a lot of other YA books out there, despite this book’s shortcomings. It’s definitely a very well written and ambitious book from a debut author. Meira is a great protagonist, and I love that she’s not portrayed as being a wishy-washy girl who thinks mostly about boys. Even though I’m a huge fan of romance in books, I’m thrilled that while Raasch did hint at a Mather/Meira/Theron love triangle; it ultimately didn’t dominate the plot, or cause the book to be plagued by a lot of contrived teen angst like YA books can be at times.
Raasch did a great job of having the plot of the book consistently move forward at good pace; which I really appreciated about this book, given the aspects of Roth’s writing for Divergent and Showalter’s writing for Firstlife that stood out to me as things that I didn’t like about those books. While there was a portion of Snow Like Ashes where I started to lose interest in the plot, which was mostly prompted by my frustration regarding the lack of world building in the book; Meira finding out that she was basically being used as a bargaining chip to form a marriage alliance between Winter and Cordell at the end of chapter ten totally reeled me back in. That really was the point in the book where I truly started to love this book despite its shortcomings. The ending of Snow Like Ashes definitely left me feeling very excited to read both Ice Like Fire and Frost Like Night in what will hopefully be the near-ish future.
That being said, my final score for Snow Like Ashes is 8.5 out of 10.
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