Ice Like Fire (Snow Like Ashes Trilogy, #2)

by Sara Raasch

[ladygrey]

As far as sequels go, this one was typical and unimpressive. I’m sorry. Maybe it’s because I’ve read so many YA series lately and so many of them all have the same flaws.

There’s an excess of setting description. There’s a preponderance of reputation—of what the character is struggling with, of their doubts and their feelings and their questions. The same internal monologue every twenty pages or so. Too much internal monologue and the heroine running off on her own and not enough character interactions and story happening. I’m just over it.

By the second half of this book I was bored. Bored of all the setting description. Bored of meira repeating how she struggled with being herself and being a queen. Bored of her repeating her issues with magic. Bored of her outrage at how every other Kingdom lived. Yes, it was bad. iI’s like Raasch decided to build a fantasy world filled with every human depravity and ten good people. Because that’s fun.

Also Meira is fairly annoying. She can’t be a queen in the beginning, letting Sir and Dendera keep her sitting in a bed instead of having the conversation with Theron she needs to. She can’t talk rationally to Theron about her issues in their politics or the fact that they don’t actually have a relationship anymore because nothing happens and they don’t talk to each other. She can’t see that Angra has warped him drastically so, granted even if she could talk to him it wouldn’t work. She’s all ‘I’m the queen and I’m winter’ but she lets Theron and Noam and Sir and even Dendera push her around instead of actually being the queen.

And why didn’t she use her magic? She hurts her people then leaves them limping around instead of healing them. Mather’s struggling to open a door but she doesn’t give him strength. Like, why not?

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I like the brief chapters from Mather’s point of view. They didn’t move the bigger story forward so that was lacking. But things happened in his sections so it was refreshing.

And at the end none of the revelations are revelations at all. Of cost course Angra is alive, he’s the bad guy of the trilogy. Clearly Theron has been poisoned by Angra and so is helping him, whether he’s fully conscious of that or not. Then Meira gets stuck on a dozen questions about Rares that were obvious 100 pages ago. Yes, he’s Paisely and the Order is in the Paisel mountains and that is where your quest must go. Why is she shocked by things she’s already figured out?

Also the love triangle. I didn’t really think there was a triangle in the first book. It seemed like there was a boy and then there was a new boy and her feelings changed and it was a natural evolution of her character. Sixteen year old girls are allowed to fall for more than one boy in their young lives and they should do or more often in books. But then there’s all the flipping back and forth in this book so I had to admit there’s a triangle. boo.

Let’s try to do better in the next one.