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a.k.a. the second Snow White retelling book I borrowed this winter.
I finished the first two chapters and kind of skimmed the rest. Basically, you know it's a bad sign when a fantasy book starts with sparring and one character tell the other to block his strike.
*flips table*
First, I want to talk about the map at the beginning of the book. For reference, you can see it in the Amazon preview of the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Like-Ashes-Sara-Raasch/dp/0062286927/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419540989&sr=1-1&keywords=snow+like+ashes
I don't know as much about cartography as I should, but it doesn't make sense that the 4 Season kingdoms are right next to each other when (the book explains) all their citizens have drastically different physical appearances. (The Autumn citizens are brown-skinned and the Winter citizens are albinos, but they're right next to each other. I don't care if there's a magical explanation for this, it's too much to swallow.) The kingdoms are all extraordinarily tiny, and does this map really expect us to believe that no one claimed the forests or the plains or the rivers and lakes?? People aren't nearly that nice in reality as to just leave resource-heavy landmarks alone. (By all appearances, no one owns those forests and rivers, which makes no sense.)
Also, why do those mountain ranges look like giant blocks? Mountain ranges form when two continents crash into each other, which is why there are only mountain ranges, not mountain blocks.
Why is there a plain between a forest and the ocean? ???
Why is there only one river? Shouldn't all the kingdoms be fighting for control of it???
.
And now for the text, or at least the first two chapters that I actually read.
The worldbuilding seems intricate, but it took me a rather long time to figure out what was going on. There were...infodumps, but they were strangely uninformative. For example, the characters mentioned the "Rhythm kingdoms" several times before I had any idea what they actually were (kingdoms that cycle through the seasons, versus 4 "Season" kingdoms that are stuck in a single season each). And I still have no idea whether the magical conduit they kept talking about was a person or an artifact.
I'm also disappointed by how uninspired some of the worldbuilding is, i.e. the "Winterians" all have white skin and white hair (...seriously?), and the Spring...ians (??) all have blond hair and green eyes. At least the Autumn people are brown-skinned (I was afraid they'd all be white redheads), but why do these kingdoms have such a narrow gene pool? Is intermarriage not allowed? ??? There's also this weird thing where the people from the Season kingdoms think they're superior—the Winterians love winter and want it to be winter all the time, and I guess somehow they haven't heard of this thing called Seasonal Affective Disorder, which literally causes people to be depressed during the winter.
The protagonist, Meira, is...well, I could tell the author was going for a Strong Female Protagonist(TM) vibe, but it didn't work so well. Meira keeps whining about how it's not fair that everyone else in her camp gets sent on all these dangerous missions (there's some kind of war going on between Spring and Winter. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, and I read the first two chapters), while she gets left behind, but her reactions feel so dissonant because hello, this is war, it's not fun and games.
(I also have no idea why Meira is randomly really proficient with chakram while everyone else seems to use swords.)
Also, the romance got started really early on, what with Meira rambling within the first few pages about how much she loves Mather, her childhood best friend who's heir to the Winter throne, and that was kind of annoying. I mean, I appreciate the fact that YA fiction seems to be moving away from jerkass bad boy love interests, but I still prefer to read a romance about people who are interesting. Reading about a protagonist swooning over Generic McGeneric Dude is just boring.
And now let's get into the gender issues (whoohoo /sarcasm).
The Winter kingdom is a matriarchy and only female heirs can use magic or something, so even though Mather is the heir, he's useless. Which is an interesting subversion. Unfortunately, the first chapter didn't give me a good impression concerning the book's handling of gender. In the first chapter, there are 3 female characters introduced and 5 men. Of the 3 female characters, there's Meira, your Strong Female Protagonist(TM); then there's the commander guy's wife, who's mentioned as not knowing how to fight at all, and also she's tiny compared to how huge he is (...???); and finally there's this female soldier, but she's explicitly described as hating the soldier life and wishing she could go back to sewing dresses instead.
I mean, the idea of a woman not wanting to be a soldier is, itself, not terrible. (There are plenty of men who probably don't want to be soldiers; however, it's seen as more socially acceptable for men to be violent and also something army and masculinity something something.) But when you only have 3 female characters so far and aside from the Strong Female Protagonist(TM) the other female characters are described in stereotypically feminine ways...that doesn't send a nice signal. Especially in a war context—do people really not understand how many women serve in armies these days and that women being soldiers is really Not A Big Deal if you lack enough men?
.
Goodreads reviews mention there's a love triangle later on in the book, which is super headdesk-worthy and makes me glad I didn't read the rest of the book that carefully.
My quick skim never revealed whether there was a reason for the Spring kingdom to invade other than For The Evilz, which is terribly one-dimensional for a book that tries to be "gritty" and have a lot of politicking and some torture. They keep going on about how the King of Winter is actually some terrible Decay magic conduit or something, which is disappointingly cliché and dull.
My main issue with this book is that it just seems fairly generic. Upon further reflection, maybe I just assumed it was a Snow White retelling from the title, because the plot doesn't seem to have anything to do with Snow White at all. It's more like "orphan girl finds out she's actually heir to royalty and the only person who can save the world," which is pretty standard fantasy fare.
I finished the first two chapters and kind of skimmed the rest. Basically, you know it's a bad sign when a fantasy book starts with sparring and one character tell the other to block his strike.
*flips table*
First, I want to talk about the map at the beginning of the book. For reference, you can see it in the Amazon preview of the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Like-Ashes-Sara-Raasch/dp/0062286927/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419540989&sr=1-1&keywords=snow+like+ashes
I don't know as much about cartography as I should, but it doesn't make sense that the 4 Season kingdoms are right next to each other when (the book explains) all their citizens have drastically different physical appearances. (The Autumn citizens are brown-skinned and the Winter citizens are albinos, but they're right next to each other. I don't care if there's a magical explanation for this, it's too much to swallow.) The kingdoms are all extraordinarily tiny, and does this map really expect us to believe that no one claimed the forests or the plains or the rivers and lakes?? People aren't nearly that nice in reality as to just leave resource-heavy landmarks alone. (By all appearances, no one owns those forests and rivers, which makes no sense.)
Also, why do those mountain ranges look like giant blocks? Mountain ranges form when two continents crash into each other, which is why there are only mountain ranges, not mountain blocks.
Why is there a plain between a forest and the ocean? ???
Why is there only one river? Shouldn't all the kingdoms be fighting for control of it???
.
And now for the text, or at least the first two chapters that I actually read.
The worldbuilding seems intricate, but it took me a rather long time to figure out what was going on. There were...infodumps, but they were strangely uninformative. For example, the characters mentioned the "Rhythm kingdoms" several times before I had any idea what they actually were (kingdoms that cycle through the seasons, versus 4 "Season" kingdoms that are stuck in a single season each). And I still have no idea whether the magical conduit they kept talking about was a person or an artifact.
I'm also disappointed by how uninspired some of the worldbuilding is, i.e. the "Winterians" all have white skin and white hair (...seriously?), and the Spring...ians (??) all have blond hair and green eyes. At least the Autumn people are brown-skinned (I was afraid they'd all be white redheads), but why do these kingdoms have such a narrow gene pool? Is intermarriage not allowed? ??? There's also this weird thing where the people from the Season kingdoms think they're superior—the Winterians love winter and want it to be winter all the time, and I guess somehow they haven't heard of this thing called Seasonal Affective Disorder, which literally causes people to be depressed during the winter.
The protagonist, Meira, is...well, I could tell the author was going for a Strong Female Protagonist(TM) vibe, but it didn't work so well. Meira keeps whining about how it's not fair that everyone else in her camp gets sent on all these dangerous missions (there's some kind of war going on between Spring and Winter. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, and I read the first two chapters), while she gets left behind, but her reactions feel so dissonant because hello, this is war, it's not fun and games.
(I also have no idea why Meira is randomly really proficient with chakram while everyone else seems to use swords.)
Also, the romance got started really early on, what with Meira rambling within the first few pages about how much she loves Mather, her childhood best friend who's heir to the Winter throne, and that was kind of annoying. I mean, I appreciate the fact that YA fiction seems to be moving away from jerkass bad boy love interests, but I still prefer to read a romance about people who are interesting. Reading about a protagonist swooning over Generic McGeneric Dude is just boring.
And now let's get into the gender issues (whoohoo /sarcasm).
The Winter kingdom is a matriarchy and only female heirs can use magic or something, so even though Mather is the heir, he's useless. Which is an interesting subversion. Unfortunately, the first chapter didn't give me a good impression concerning the book's handling of gender. In the first chapter, there are 3 female characters introduced and 5 men. Of the 3 female characters, there's Meira, your Strong Female Protagonist(TM); then there's the commander guy's wife, who's mentioned as not knowing how to fight at all, and also she's tiny compared to how huge he is (...???); and finally there's this female soldier, but she's explicitly described as hating the soldier life and wishing she could go back to sewing dresses instead.
I mean, the idea of a woman not wanting to be a soldier is, itself, not terrible. (There are plenty of men who probably don't want to be soldiers; however, it's seen as more socially acceptable for men to be violent and also something army and masculinity something something.) But when you only have 3 female characters so far and aside from the Strong Female Protagonist(TM) the other female characters are described in stereotypically feminine ways...that doesn't send a nice signal. Especially in a war context—do people really not understand how many women serve in armies these days and that women being soldiers is really Not A Big Deal if you lack enough men?
.
Goodreads reviews mention there's a love triangle later on in the book, which is super headdesk-worthy and makes me glad I didn't read the rest of the book that carefully.
My quick skim never revealed whether there was a reason for the Spring kingdom to invade other than For The Evilz, which is terribly one-dimensional for a book that tries to be "gritty" and have a lot of politicking and some torture. They keep going on about how the King of Winter is actually some terrible Decay magic conduit or something, which is disappointingly cliché and dull.
My main issue with this book is that it just seems fairly generic. Upon further reflection, maybe I just assumed it was a Snow White retelling from the title, because the plot doesn't seem to have anything to do with Snow White at all. It's more like "orphan girl finds out she's actually heir to royalty and the only person who can save the world," which is pretty standard fantasy fare.
