Stitching Snow

by R. C. Lewis

[nannah]

I'm giving this a 4-star review for sheer enjoyment. I couldn't put this down, and I thought about this all the time when I wasn't reading it. It was so fun to read! But it also had so, so many flaws, so much that thinking back on it, it's hard to think of it as an actual ... well-written book. It's still fun! Just not ... that well put together.

Book content warnings:
rape
incest

Stitching Snow is a sci-fi revolving around four planets: Thanda, Garam, Candara, and Windsong, the last of which rules over them all with two corrupt monarchs. Our protagonist, Essie, lives on frozen Thanda, repairing and coding mining drones, and living a rather monotonous life until a man named Dane literally crash-lands into her life. And with him comes the interplanetary war she was trying to hide from, as well as her past.

It's hard not to compare this book to Cinder by Marissa Meyer.
- both have a female protagonist who's really good with robotics/electronics
- both have a protagonist with a robot (or drone) friend
- both are sci-fi retellings of well-known fairy tales involving multiple planets (or in Cinder's case, a planet and a moon)
- both have an evil queen
- both have a protagonist who's secretly the princess and who gets with a prince from another country/place

And it's nearly impossible not to believe this had to have been at least heavily inspired by Cinder. Not that it's a terribly bad thing; it's definitely its own book, but sometimes even through my enjoyment I found myself thinking if it started out as fanfiction. :S I know that's like, considered the worst insult when referring to published authors for some reason, even though some fanfictions have been more enjoyable and better written than many published books I've read! That besides, many phrases from this book have been some I've seen very, very often in fanfiction, as in so often that they're almost trademark bad fanfiction phrases:

"His eyes flashed" "His eyes darkened [in rage]" "a series of emotions flashed across his face, first surprise, then grief, then anger ..." etc.

And yes, I read fanfiction. No shame. But some of the word usage in fics just don't make sense ... and really should have been caught by professional editors before being published.

The ending also seemed too quickly patched up. After Essie's broadcast, everyone seemed to accept the King and Queen's betrayals so easily. They switched loyalties so easily. Not to mention the subplot of Garam wanting Essie's expertise of the drones seemed to vanish. No one else from Garam was interested in that? In that huge opportunity? It was hard to believe.

And lastly I'll touch on world building. At first glance the worlds seem fairly fleshed out. One world contains a mineral the others use, so it's full of mostly the poorest, and what's "considered" the stupidest people to mine it for the elite worlds, etc.

But therein also lies the problem: if these planets were countries, it would seem more plausible. But grouping one type of people by an entire world? My brain can't even wrap itself around that. How can a whole world contain just one type of person (aka people that can be persuaded by money to switch sides - as described in the book). Everyone from all four worlds spoke the same language, and hell, practically the same dialect. Thanda seemed to have a slight dialect (somewhat of an English-based one?), but that was all. There was no mention of how they all shared a language, or how even in Thanda, a country so remote from everyone else, in a place on Thanda that's extremely remote, the people there spoke the same language. It didn't seem organic.

Okay, anyway, even with all its flaws, I still love this book. I don't know how, but I do.