Review of Snow Like Ashes

Snow Like Ashes (Snow Like Ashes #1)

Author: Sara Raasch

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Format: Paperback

Find on: Goodreads | Amazon

Summary 

A heartbroken girl. A fierce warrior. A hero in the making.

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.

Review

I tried really hard to like this book. From the summary, I thought I would really enjoy it. There are eight kingdoms, four Seasons and four Rhythms. Angra, the King of Spring, is determined to destroy Winter. Meira is an orphaned Winterian, one of only eight to escape Spring’s enslavement after the fall of Winter. Raised by Sir alongside Winter’s King, Mather,  Meira wants to be a warrior and restore Winter. Sure this plot line is very familiar, and I really thought I would like it, but I just could not get into it. 

Meira is strong; she is certainly not the best warrior out there—Mather can easily best her in a fight—but she is determined to restore Winter. All she wants is to be given the opportunity to fight, and she is disgruntled as Sir forces her to stay safe and not go on missions while Winter’s King, Mather, risks his life. (And although the reason for this is the big reveal at the end of the book, by chapter two it was already obvious. No surprises here unfortunately.) While Meira is a likable character despite her occasional bouts of selfishness as one would expect from a heroine in a YA novel, I just couldn’t connect with her, which was odd because the entire story is told from her point of view. 

From the very beginning, Meira is in love with Mather, although she knows that because he will someday be king and she is just an orphan, there is no future for them. The few Winterian refugees travel to Cordell, one of the Rhythms, to seek an alliance, and in return for Cordell’s aid to restore Winter Meira must marry Theron, King Noam’s son and heir. (By this point it should be really obvious that Meira is not just an orphan.) Enter love triangle. I’m not a fan of them, but this one was not too awful. Both Mather and Theron are likable, well developed characters, and the most exciting part of the book for me was when the two had a spat, presumably over Meira—though the motivation on Theron’s part in the disagreement is unclear. 

One of the weakest parts of the book was all the excessive info dump. While this is expected to an extent in fantasy, there was quite a few history and culture lessons that seemed unnecessary to the book, and they appeared in almost every chapter. A quick summary of the excessive info dump is that the Kingdoms rely on magic, which each kingdom’s monarch is able to access through a conduit and an object. The problem: the Decay is taking over and threatening to destroy the kingdoms by taking over the monarchs and making them do evil things. Winter is a matriarchy and following the previous Queen’s death, Winter is unable to access its magic as Mather, the King, is male and only the Queens have access. Thus, Mather’s only useful purpose of king is to father the next queen of Winter, a gender role reversal that was quite refreshing. Even worse is that Winter’s object, a locket, was broken into parts and taken by Angra. Winter’s King must also have both parts of the locket restored before Winter has a chance of accessing its power again. 

Although the plot was nothing I haven’t seen before and very predictable, I enjoyed the writing. It felt a bit flowery and repetitive at times, and the book could have easily cut down to be a bit shorter because of it, but it was overall well written. This was not a bad book, but it was not good either. I simply could not get into the storyline. 

Cover: 5/5

Plot: 3/5

Characters/character development: 4/5

Writing style: 4/5

Overall: 3.8/5

Review of The Lord of Opium

The Lord of Opium (Matteo Alacran #2)

Author: Nancy Farmer

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Publication date: September 2013

Format: HC

View on: Goodreads | Amazon

Summary 

The new book continues the story of Matt, the boy who was cloned from evil drug lord El Patrón in The House of the Scorpion. Now 14 years old, Matt rules his own country, the Land of Opium, the only thriving place in a world ravaged by ecological disaster. Though he knows that the cure for ending the suffering is hidden in Opium, Matt faces obstacles and enemies at every turn when he tries to use his power to help.

Review

Following El Patrón’s death, fourteen-year-old Matt is now the ruler of Opium. With Opium’s borders shut down and isolating the country from the rest of the world, Matt sets about righting El Patrón’s wrongs. Having previously been a clone, Matt knows what it feels like to not be human, and his first mission is to free the eejits, brainwashed workers who behave and are treated like machines. Matt enlists the help of Dr. Rivas, the one doctor left in Opium who was not murdered during El Patrón’s funeral banquet, to work on finding a way to free the eejits. Matt’s other goal is to discover the secret of the biosphere to revitalize the over depleted soil and in doing so save the overused fields of Opium and the world.  

I loved The House of the Scorpion when I was younger, and when I learned there was a sequel, I was excited to read The Lord of Opium, but this is one of the cases where the sequel simply did not live up to the original. To start, the pacing in the book was very slow. There was a lot of world building—which I really liked—but the details sometimes became excessive. The beginning of the book really dragged on for me as nothing seemed to be happening. Matt and Cienfuegos traveled around trying to get Opium under control while concealing El Patrón’s death from the other drug lords, who would try to seize Opium if they learned El Patrón was dead. 

Then there was the romance. Matt meet Waitress, an eejit, and took a liking to her. He renamed her Mirasol and tried to restore her humanity, but he had little success. Instead, Matt ends up developing a fascination for her and takes advantage of her brainwashed state, which was very creepy and disturbing. While Matt is focused on Mirasol, he is still in love with/obsessing over Marìa. While Marìa is in New York and under her mother’s, Esparanza’s, control she wants to return to Matt and Opium. Their relationship is just plain weird. They are strangely obsessed with each other for being two fifteen-year-olds, and while Matt spends a lot of time thinking about Marìa, she barely appears in the book. 

There were quite a few new characters. Matt meets Listen, a clone of Glass Eye Dabengwa’s, another drug lord, dead wife, who Dr. Rivas has created to be his future wife. There is also Bug, a child with no impulse control who, like Matt, is one of El Patrón’s clones. Matt takes a liking to Listen and takes her with him, but I found her one dimensional and uninteresting. Her character was not well developed despite the fact that she was one of the main characters. 

The one part of the book that I really liked was Matt’s inner struggle against his inner El Patrón. As a clone, Matt still hears echo’s of El Patrón and his struggle to find himself, despite being a part of El Patrón, was interesting and well developed. 

I think I would have really liked this book had I not had such high expectation for it. Though there were a lot of parts I did not like, the book overall was quite good, but it just doesn’t compare to The House of the Scorpion. 

Cover: 5/5

Writing style: 5/5

Characters/character development: 3/5

Plot: 3/5

Overall: 3.8/5

Review of The White Rose

The White Rose (The Lone City #2)

Author: Amy Ewing

Publisher: HarperTeen

Format: HC

ISBN: 978-0-06-223581-7

Summary

Violet is on the run. After the Duchess of the Lake catches Violet with Ash, the hired companion at the Palace of the Lake, Violet has no choice but to escape the Jewel or face certain death. So along with Ash and her best friend, Raven, Violet runs away from her unbearable life of servitude.

But no one said leaving the Jewel would be easy. As they make their way through the circles of the Lone City, Regimentals track their every move, and the trio barely manages to make it out unscathed and into the safe haven they were promised—a mysterious house in the Farm.

But there’s a rebellion brewing, and Violet has found herself in the middle of it. Alongside a new ally, Violet discovers her Auguries are much more powerful than she ever imagined. But is she strong enough to rise up against the Jewel and everything she has ever known?

The White Rose is a raw, captivating sequel to The Jewel that fans won’t be able to put down until the final shocking moments. 

Review

After the crash and burn ending to The Jewel, I did not have high hopes for The White Rose, but after reading it all in one sitting, I was quite mistaken. With the resemblance The Jewel bears to the Selection series, I expected the series to continue on in the vapid fancy dresses and luxury obsessed fashion (no pun intended) of the first book, while largely ignoring the underlying—and much more fascinating—political issues. The White Rose was anything but glamorous. 

With Violet and Ash discovered, they find Raven and with the help of Lucien and Garnet escape the Jewel. Now fugitives, they cannot be seen. The movement Lucien heads, as the three fugitives soon learn, is much more extensive than they originally thought. Aided by a secret organization called the Black Key, Violet with her perfect score on her growth augury is the one who has the potential to bring down the royalty. After reading The Jewel where everyone just accepts the evils the royalty commit, I was quite pleased to see that there is now a rebellion brewing, and Violet is in the thick of it. She is finally becoming the interesting, well-developed character she is capable of being.

Violet soon learns that the auguries are not what she thought they were. Color. Shape. Growth. They aren’t real. The real power comes from somewhere else and it is far more powerful than anyone realizes. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but suffice to say, the new information regarding the auguries goes a long way to explaining many of the questions I had from the first book. 

Now free of the Jewel, Violet and Raven must figure out how to use their powers and bring down the Jewel in a fight that will require the unification everyone the Jewel has wronged to win. With the help of Sil, a surrogate who escaped the Jewel decades previously, Violet begins to understand her true powers and she learns that the evils committed by the royalty extend far beyond exploiting the people and keeping them destitute. The Lone City is not all that it appears, and Violet knows she must fight the royalty not just because they are tyrants but to restore the island to its former glory.

The book ends with a massive cliff hanger—once again I won’t be giving anything away, but I will totally be reading the next book.  The writing style is once again compelling and easy to read, and it drew me in almost as much as the storyline.  Thankfully, the romance was toned down: there were fewer sappy romance scenes in this book, but the ones that did make it in were even more vomit inducing than the ones in the previous book. There is more Garnet, and I love him. His bad boy, rebel personality is charming, and we get to explore deeper facets of his character. Not to mention I totally ship Garnet/Violet more than Ash/Violet. How does she manage to choose the boring, underdeveloped guy anyways?

As much as I liked this book, there were still some issues I had with it. The naming conventions are still ridiculous. Ash is still a completely un-swoon-worthy love interest. That guy is boring and he does not have much of a discernible personality, but we are briefly introduced to his family, which helped him become a little less flat. 

Parts of the book were a bit rushed. It took Sil and Lucien’s sister a long time to unleash and discover their powers, and I feel Violet found hers too easily. A large part of the story for me is the struggle, and Violet does not struggle nearly enough. Sure it is Raven’s near death that motivated her to accept the power for what it was, but I still feel that part of the book was rushed. When Violet taught other surrogates how to use their powers and not the auguries, they learned even quicker still with no struggle whatsoever. That is just too convenient to be believable. That type of power should have taken a much greater struggle to acquire. And, surprise surprise, Ash, a companion, is also a trained fighter for some reason. Let me just say deus ex machina is not something I enjoy reading in books and it comes across as quite clumsy. Amy Ewing has certainly learned quite a bit about writing since her last book, but she still has a way to go. 

Regardless, I loved this book and I would highly recommend giving it a quick read. 

Cover: 5/5

Writing style: 4/5

Characters/character development: 4/5

Plot: 3/5

Overall: 4.1/5