Kirkus! Review!
GUYS!
Kirkus reviewed SLA! Behold!
A carefully crafted fantasy grapples with intense issues.
In Primoria, the world protagonist Meira inhabits, there are eight kingdoms: four Seasons, in a perpetual state of the season they’re named for, and four Rhythms that cycle through all four. Meira is one of the remaining eight free Winterians: Sixteen years prior to the opening of the book, King Angra of Spring attacked Winter, slaying its queen, destroying its Royal Conduit (a locket used by a female ruler to magically aid her country) and enslaving the surviving Winterians. Attempting to reclaim half the locket, Meira is captured but almost instantly escapes due to quick thinking and her military training—a feat that Raasch makes surprisingly believable. Her complicated relationship with Mather, heir to the Winterian throne, is put on hold when Spring scouts follow her to camp and the refugees must flee to the Rhythm of Cordell—where Meira meets the instantly likable Prince Theron and discovers she’s very much a pawn in a bigger game. The dramatic twist toward the end is impressive both in its believability and its unpredictability. Unfortunately, Raasch’s world is racialized, and the heroic Winterians are pale and beautiful. While the villain is also fair-skinned, the choice to valorize whiteness is perhaps ill-considered given the fraught history of racial stereotyping in high fantasy.
This heavy high fantasy manages moments of humor and beauty for a satisfying read. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
Firstly, I love that whoever did this review clearly has knowledge of the fantasy genre. SQUEE.
Secondly, they brought up an issue that I knew I’d run into eventually, especially with Book 1 — race.
There are a lot of white people in SNOW LIKE ASHES. This is due in part to the fact that in Book 1 we only really deal with three of the eight kingdoms — Winter, Spring, and Cordell.
Winterians have WHITE WHITE skin. Like, comically white. Like quite literally ivory. They’re Winterians — it’s their kingdom, their culture, just as much as the Summerians have darker skin (which will come into play in Book 2 — diversity yay!). All of the Season Kingdoms are, in my head, progressively darker than the last — Winter is lightest, then Spring with slightly darker skin (more what we think of when we think caucasian), then Summer with much darker (more a tan/bronze color), then Autumn (the darkest, a really really deep, dark brown).
(And that’s not even touching on the other three Rhythms…)
We get a little glimpse into Autumn at the tail end of SLA (not nearly a long enough glimpse), but other than that, yeah, this book is super white. Which was a mistake on my part, and I apologize in advance for the sheer WHITEness of SLA. I did NOT intend for the literal whiteness of the Winterians’ skin to be anything but a trait of their heritage. They’re the Kingdom of Winter — it seemed natural, in my head, for them to have all white features, as a kind of camouflage-with-their-environment evolutionary (er, well, magical) result. But I can see how this might be construed badly, and I apologize.
But I swear up and down and all around that the next books will involve more of the other kingdoms, and the world will expand and depict an equal balance of diversity, as our world does. We get to meet some amazing characters who come to be hugely important to Meira/the story, like the princess of Summer, Ceridwen, and the heir of Autumn, Shazi, and I am so so so excited for you guys to get to know them.
I’m severely jumping ahead, though — yes, so, Kirkus review! Valid points! Diversity yay!
