Book Review: Snow Like Ashes (Book #1 in the Snow Like Ashes trilogy) by Sara Raasch

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.

Link to the full article:Book Series Recap: Snow Like Ashes Recap

Winter: I know this is a Snow White retelling, so where are the seven dwarfs? (My thoughts on book #4 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Before I start talking about my thoughts on Winter, I just wanted to say that since Winter is the last book in the Lunar Chronicles series, I’ll be discussing my thoughts on both the book Winter; as well as my thoughts on the series as a whole; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

Right off the bat, I have to say that as much as I’ve loved The Lunar Chronicles, Winter is definitely my least favorite book in the main series. However, if you’re somebody that prefers to lump Fairest: Levana’s Story in with the main Lunar Chronicles series (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress and Winter) when it comes to how you would rank each of the books from your favorite book in the series to your least favorite book in the series, Winter would be my second least favorite book in the series. While there are quite a few things that I loved about this book, there are also a lot of things about Winter that really frustrated the hell out of me at times.

For starters, the character Winter definitely ended up being my second least favorite character in the series, behind Queen Levana. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t outright hate the character Winter, but she really annoyed me quite a bit throughout the book, and for the most part I just couldn’t get invested in the relationship between Winter and Jacin, which is something I’ll discuss in more detail later on in this review. When it comes to fictional characters that are written as being mentally unstable, I’m definitely able to enjoy that kind of character if they’re written in a way that’s genuinely compelling and interesting if the writer is approaching it from a more serious angle. I can also enjoy characters that are written as being mentally unstable if it’s done more for the purposes of being entertaining and possibly somewhat comedic or campy like soap operas will do sometimes. Kimberly Shaw from Melrose Place is a character that comes to mind when it comes to writing characters that are supposed to be mentally unstable this way.

While Winter isn’t an altogether terrible character, she definitely annoyed me quite a bit throughout the book, which is a shame, because I think that there are aspects of the character that were pretty interesting and could have made her a very compelling character if the writing for Winter had been handled differently. Unfortunately, the way the character was written made the parts of the book featuring her rather grating and eye roll inducing in my opinion.

That being said, it’s honestly kind of hard for me to tell what exactly Marissa Meyer was going for when it comes to the character Winter, and the way she’s written. In some ways, Winter’s reluctance to use her lunar gift, and the way she struggles with controlling the hallucinations that she has throughout the book, because she refuses to use it reminded me a lot of Elsa from Frozen; and how she didn’t know how she could control her powers until the end of the movie. The difference, however, is that I actually like Elsa, whereas Winter just constantly annoyed me throughout the book. For the most part, the parts of the book that featured Winter were honestly some of my absolute least favorite parts of the book.

The Lunar Chronicles: Brace yourselves, Everybody! It’s time to explore the mind and past of Queen Levana (My thoughts on Fairest: Levana’s Story by Marissa Meyer)

Right off the bat, I have to say that while I’ve absolutely loved the Lunar Chronicles so far, Fairest: Levana’s Story is definitely my least favorite book in the series. For the record, I still have to read Winter, so that opinion may change. As I said in my review for Cress, I was really hoping that this book would give Levana some depth and complexity, both as a villain and as a character in general. To be fair, I do think that this book gave Levana some complexity and depth, but unfortunately it didn’t give her too much of those things, which as a result, greatly hindered my enjoyment of Fairest.

The biggest problem that I have with Fairest is the fact that right from the beginning of the book, Levana comes across as being so self-centered, unlikable and evil that it was extremely hard for me to get emotionally invested in Levana as a character and care about her, or get invested in what was happening throughout the book. While the Lunar Chronicles series as a whole has made me think about the TV show Once Upon a Time a lot, as well as the show Grimm, since they’re both shows that involve reimagining fairy tales; Fairest reminded me a lot of the season one episode of Once Upon a Time, “The Stable Boy” where the backstory behind Regina’s hatred for Snow White was revealed. I pretty much had the same problems with this book as I did with that episode of Once Upon a Time. The reveal of what happened to make Regina hate Snow White so much ended up being incredibly disappointing, and it was honestly rather difficult to go along with the idea that Regina was justified in blaming Snow White for the death of Daniel, who was the man that she loved and wanted to marry when it was her mother, Cora, who had actually killed Daniel. While I wasn’t crazy about the explanation as to why Regina hated Snow White so much and wanted to get revenge on her, I was still able to have at least some sympathy for Regina. Plus, I thought that Regina had plenty of depth to her at that point in the series. Levana, on the other hand, lacks depth and is constantly acting so coldhearted, self-centered and flat-out evil throughout the book, that the reader is never really given a chance to feel all that sorry for Levana or truly like her.

I get that Levana’s sister, Channary, was physically and emotionally abusive towards her and is responsible for the scars that she has on her face, but that doesn’t automatically mean that the reader is going to feel sympathetic towards Levana; because the things that Levana does in this book that don’t involve Channary in any way are pretty horrible. I can’t help but wonder if Meyer was trying to portray Levana as a sympathetic villain in this book. However, the thing I think people need to remember is that there’s a big difference between a character having a sympathetic backstory and actually being a sympathetic character. 

Cress: This sure isn’t your typical Rapunzel retelling (My thoughts on book #3 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Let me preface this review by saying that out of all the fairy tales that Marissa Meyer incorporated into The Lunar Chronicles, the story of Rapunzel is definitely the one that I know the least about. That being said, I feel like the fact that I wasn’t very familiar with the story of Rapunzel actually enhanced my enjoyment of Cress in a lot of ways. When I was reading Cinder and Scarlet, I found myself constantly thinking about the original stories of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood and was frequently wondering how Marissa Meyer might or might not incorporate and reimagine various elements from those stories into the series. However, when I was reading Cress, I just enjoyed it as its own unique story without ever really comparing and contrasting it to the story of Rapunzel.

Before I go any further, I’d like to just go right ahead and say that Cress is definitely my favorite book in the series so far. If you’ve read my review for Scarlet, you may remember that one of the things that I talked about in my review is that the book wasn’t quite what I was expecting when it comes to it serving as a follow-up to Cinder and a continuation of the series. Cress, however, was much more in line with what I had originally been expecting the books that followed Cinder to be like prior to actually reading Scarlet. One of my biggest criticisms about Scarlet is that I felt like Cinder was kind of hogging the spotlight throughout the book, and when that wasn’t the case, the book felt like too much of an ensemble piece for my taste. I really feel like Marissa Meyer should have focused at least a little more on Scarlet and Wolf in Scarlet than she did. While Cress is also very much an ensemble piece, I think Meyer did a much better job of putting most of the focus of the book on Cress, as well as Thorne since he’s Cress’ love interest in the series.

One of things that I have to give this book a lot of praise for is the fact that the story had really great pacing, in my opinion. There was a lot of action and different things happening throughout the book, but the story never felt like it was moving too slow or too fast. Plus, all of the storylines that were going on throughout the book were very interesting and engaging, so I never found myself getting bored, or having trouble paying attention to the story as I was listening to the audiobook version of Cress.

Crescent “Cress” Moon Darnel is definitely a very likable and interesting character. In a story that’s full of fantasy elements, she really felt like a real person and a well-rounded character, especially when it came to her feelings for Thorne. Given the fact that Cress had lived a rather sheltered life, being stuck in a satellite in space for pretty much her entire life, it made a lot of sense to me that she would have somewhat of a naïve view of the world and the stories that she had read about Thorne in the news. She believed that Thorne had had noble reasons for the various questionable things that he had done over the years, often breaking various laws in the process, when in reality Thorne’s motives for his actions had typically been rather self-serving.

Scarlet: This sure isn’t your typical Little Red Riding Hood retelling (My thoughts on book #2 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Now that I’ve finished reading and reviewing Emma Chase’s Legal Briefs series (Overruled, Sustained, Appealed), I’ve decided to read and review the rest of the Lunar Chronicles basically back-to-back-to-back. Admittedly, I originally thought about doing that when I read and reviewed Cinder back in January, but I ultimately decided to hold off on doing that since I wanted to do the same thing with the Legal Briefs series; that being said, here are my thoughts on Scarlet.

Right off the bat, I have to admit that while I loved Scarlet, this book ended up being very different from the way I was expecting it to be. I was really expecting the titular Scarlet Benoit to be featured in this book front and center with her being the protagonist of the book, and Wolf basically being the co-lead character of the book. However, this book ultimately ended up feeling like more of an ensemble piece than anything else. That definitely really took me by surprise as I was reading it.

While I’ve always thought that three of the most important tasks that the first book in a series is supposed to accomplish is to introduce the main characters, introduce the premise of the series, as well as establish the status quo for the series; I feel like this book did a much better job of establishing what I can expect from the Lunar Chronicles as a whole. Sure, Cinder did a great job of introducing the characters Cinder, Kai and Queen Levana, as well as various aspects of the series such as how the characters are dealing with the threat of the letumosis plague; but as I said, I was originally expecting each book in the series to focus primarily on a different character, with the characters from the previous books being featured in a rather reduced capacity. However, Scarlet really ended up coming across as an ensemble novel that focused on a variety of characters instead of focusing primarily on Scarlet, along with Wolf.

Cinder: Get ready to see the story of Cinderella like you’ve never seen it before (My thoughts on book #1 in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer)

Let me start off this review by saying that much like Veronica Roth’s Divergent, Cinder is a book that I’ve wanted to read for a very long time. Thankfully, it didn’t completely disappoint me like Divergent did. I’d even say that Cinder actually exceeded my expectations. That being said, I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t aware of the fact that Cinder is the first book in a series called The Lunar Chronicles until very recently when I saw reviews for the third book in the series, Cress, and a review for the fifth and final book in the series, Winter, on one of my favorite book review channels on YouTube, Bookables. With that said, here are my thoughts on Cinder.

One of the reasons why I’ve always wanted to read Cinder is because I’ve always been a huge fan of retellings or “reimaginings” of fairy tales. I love the movie Hoodwinked, but admittedly I still need to see Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil. I’m also a huge fan of the TV shows Once Upon a Time and Grimm. Much like those examples of fairytale retellings, Cinder is an awesome new take on the story of Cinderella. Another reason why I love this book so much is because I’m also a fan of science fiction books, TV shows, and movies. This story definitely contains some elements of science fiction given the fact that the character Cinder is a cyborg and people apparently live on the moon in the Lunar Chronicles world.

Linh Cinder, who’s usually simply referred to as “Cinder” in the book, is a very fun and likable character. I love how she really has a tendency to be sarcastic. At the same time, she’s definitely a character that has a lot of heart and compassion for others, despite the fact that her stepmother, Linh Adri, and her stepsister, Linh Pearl, are both quite mean to her. Cinder clearly cares a lot about her other stepsister, Linh Peony, who was also a great character. I was definitely very sad about the fact that Peony died after she contracted the letumosis plague.

The interaction between Cinder and Dr. Erland as they worked together throughout the book to try and find a cure for the letumosis plague was a lot of fun to read, and one of my favorite aspects of the book. I’m really hoping that Dr. Erland will be featured in the other books in The Lunar Chronicles series in some capacity. The fact that the citizens of New Bejing were dealing with the threat of a plague definitely added a really interesting element to the story and created some very compelling drama in the story as well, with Peony and Prince Kai’s father, Emperor Rikan, sadly both dying from the plague.