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HowdyYAL

Howdy YAL!

I used to be the blogger called YAL Book Briefs, but I grew bored of the handle and changed my name to Howdy YAL. I also respond to MJ. I like to read, write, eat truffles, and watch bad Lifetime movies. 

Some Evil Queen

Stitching Snow - R.C. Lewis

Verdict: It’s okay. Not great, but okay.

 

 

I’m actually relieved about that since this one hasn’t gotten the best reviews.  And usually when something hasn’t gotten mixed reviews I fall into the me no likey category.  But in the case  I’m just sort of meh on the whole thing.

 

Stitching Snow is not a bad book.  It’s really not.  Grant it, it’s not a good part either.  But I will say it fulfilled a need.

 

A need for space fairytale retellings.  But this ain’t no Lunar Chronicles.

And when it tried to be it didn’t work…but when it tried to be it’s own thing I actually smiled in parts.

 

The best thing about this book is probably it’s main character.  I liked Essie.  Her voice wasn’t whiney for the most part and she made a pretty good poor man’s version of Cinder.  Okay, she is clearly a different character from Cinder.  And for the record, I am not spending on planning the whole review comparing the two books-I just have to talk about the very big elephant in the room before I can move on.  It’s just that there are some very big similarities between the two characters.  Both being long lost princesses who have an evil stepmother after them.  Both having super mind powers and an interest in mechanics.  But they are different.  One has a superior love interest to the other and one is a cyborg while the other isn’t.

 

Essie also is weaker than Cinder and that’s totally not a bad thing-I won’t talk about Cinder for the rest of the review, I promise.  And sometimes I’m okay with this and sometimes, well, I’d just wish she stop acting tough and own her weakness or at least show some consistency there.

 

Bad ass or school marm? Well, I guess being confused with your identity is a Snow trait.

 

But overall, she’s not a bad character.

 

Her love interest I didn’t like.  I’m sorry, I don’t like the I’m going to kidnap you and we’re going to fall in love trope. It never works for me.  Especially when said character continues to act like he has something stuffed up his ass till he gets hit be the insta love wand midway through the novel.  His shift in persona just seems too sudden for me to truly buy it.

 

Besides, the two main leads the one character I had issues with was the Evil Queen.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled with Regina from Once Upon a Time, but I view this character as being multi faceted and in control.  The queen, in this version, had a supporting role at best.  And defeating her was ridiculously easy.  I did like all the nods to the original tale though so plus for that.

 

And the plotting and pacing for this book was pretty good for the most part.  The book was fairly well paced and I felt like Lewis had the right amount of page count.  Though admittedly, getting involved in the book’s world took awhile.  The world building is a bit hazy and it takes awhile to sort of get the feel of things.  Though once I did, I really enjoyed bits of it.  The drones were cute.   Though it was still hazy.

 

Stitching Snow isn’t going to be a book that I’ll probably remember in future months, but I don’t feel like I completely wasted my time with it.  I enjoyed it.  It had faults, but I didn’t want to gouge my eyes out.  It was enjoyable but it didn’t wow me.

 

 

Source: http://howdyyal.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/some-evil-queenstitching-snow-by-rc-lewis