BOOK REVIEW: Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis

Stitching Snow

by R.C. Lewis (Goodreads Author)

ebook, 338 pages

Published October 14th 2014 by Disney-Hyperion

Goodreads synopsis: Princess Snow is missing.

   Her home planet is filled with violence and corruption at the hands of King Matthias and his wife as they attempt to punish her captors. The king will stop at nothing to get his beloved daughter back—but that’s assuming she wants to return at all.

   Essie has grown used to being cold. Temperatures on the planet Thanda are always sub-zero, and she fills her days with coding and repairs for the seven loyal drones that run the local mines.

   When a mysterious young man named Dane crash-lands near her home, Essie agrees to help the pilot repair his ship. But soon she realizes that Dane’s arrival was far from accidental, and she’s pulled into the heart of a war she’s risked everything to avoid. With the galaxy’s future—and her own—in jeopardy, Essie must choose who to trust in a fiery fight for survival.

I wasn't sure what to expect when picking this book up. And I got way more than I expected. Definitely one of the top books of this year for me so far. Definitely movie material here.

I think what I was expecting was something written by the Disney formula and forcing all the things to fit into nice neat packages in order to make the story move forward. But that isn't what I got. What I got was this great storytelling, keeping to the main theme of Snow White in the most generalist of ways, but really exploring themes that can kinda scare kids. Snow/Essie as a character is truly empowering. She had to overcome a whole lot to get to where she was and at the end you learn the terrible price she had to pay back then and why she kept it a secret.

This is a story that is loosely based on the fairy tale of Snow White. You have the evil queen, you have her hatred of Snow (aka Essie), and you have the prince. All the dwarfs have been replaced by interesting robots that Essie created to help the miners on the plance of Thanda where she has been living for the last 8 years (or should I say "hiding out"?). 

Essie does extreme fighting with the other miners in order to gain their respect as well as some needed money to pay to fix her robots (a technique she calls "stitching".) Essie is basically a hacker. She fiddles with code in order to make things work on Thanda. Because of her expertise, she has made the mining colony on 42 the most prolific among all the other mining areas. She gives them a better life because now with the robots assisting many of the men won't die early deaths.

What everyone doesn't know is that Essie, this unassuming girl, is the princess of  very fruitful planet. And a man, Dane, whose father has been imprisoned due to Essie's escape from the kingdom, wants to trade Essie for his father's release.

This is just a great, great book. It really pulls you in and you get invested immediately into the lives of the characters. A real action-packed tear-jerker. Check this one out, definitely!

5 Stars

I received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) from Net Galley in return for an honest review. I thank Net Galley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this title.