Snow Like Ashes (A YA Book Review)

Snow Like Ashes by Sarah Raasch

Spoiler Free!

At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about this book. In what I consider high fantasy or even hardcore sci-fi, it takes me a while to keep places and people straight. In the beginning, I went back and forth between being bored, confused, and loving it. At about 160 pages in, that’s when I fell in love with the book and couldn’t put it down.

The general premise is a land where are there 8 kingdoms, 4 tied to seasons and 4 called the rhythms. We follow Meira who is from Winter, which was destroyed by Spring. She and several others are living as refugees. The rest of the Winterians are slaves in work camps in Spring. The ultimate goal of the refugees is to restore the magical conduit, a necklace, of their kingdom and somehow free the slaves. This causes them to embark on dangerous missions and soon Meira finds herself a political pawn.

There are some twists and turns, one major plot twist I saw coming, but it took me a few beats to put the pieces together. I do love a good love triangle, and Mather, Meira, and Theron don’t disappoint. But currently, I am team Theron. I think Mather and Meira are too similar to one another. It took me a while to piece together all the magic/conduit parts of the plot. But part of that is because a good chunk was revealed slowly over the course of the entire book. Luckily, I have the other two books in this trilogy, and plan on starting Frost Like Fire right away. A solid 4 out of 5 stars.