Ice Like Fire

Magic is all about choice. Choosing to use it, choosing to surrender to it, choosing to take it from the chasm--choosing to let it break in defense of a kingdom. The most powerful magic of all is choice, and of that power, the strongest choice anyone can make is an act of sacrifice.

4 STARS Another stunning book read in 2015! It seems like this is the year of the mighty greats in my ever-expanding library. Though this book may not have reached the caliber of some of the others, I still enjoyed it immensely and will anxiously await the next installment. And can we look at the cover for just a moment please, because damn that is gorgeous.

Anyway, I'm sure you care more about the content than the cover, so let's get this show on the road. The story picks up a few months after the events of the last one, with Meira struggling to embrace her powers as the Winterian queen, Mather trying to understand his reality and his place in the world, and Theron attempting to unite Primoria with a charter of peace, an innocent and naïve plan at best. The magic chasm, this ancient power locked within the high mountains of Winter, is suddenly rediscovered with Cordell's endless pursuit of power. However, the chasm is locked by, you guessed it, more magic (shocker, I know). This leads Meira, Theron, and their collective guard on a quest to seek the three keys that will unlock magic for the entire population of the realm, though both characters feel very differently about their motives.

The plot, though unyielding at first, caught me up in its thrill relatively easily within the first hundred pages. The traveling between the various states seemed a bit lengthy to me, however this could have been intended for the reader to empathize with Meira's emotional tension. The quest seemed a bit stereotypical at first, but the character's emotions elevated the story above any previous connections to other novels. One thing that threw me off quite a bit and didn't seem to resolve until the last fifty pages or so was Mather's perspective. I hadn't been expecting it, and maybe that's because it's been a while since I read the first book in this series, but the narrative and tense jumps was a real struggle for me. It helped that the pronouns remained constant, rather than the shifting first perspective found in many dual narrative books, but the switch from present to past tense threw me off pretty badly. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why Raasch did it: it helps to tell the difference between the character's thoughts and what story is being told in each location. But it still made the novel a bit jumpy and disconnected to me. But that's only one little thing in a huge pile of a wonderful novel. The characters' emotions in this novel by far surpassed those of the previous one. I felt the true connection to Meira and even to Mather that I hadn't quite developed in Snow Like Ashes. The betrayals, the twists, the different emotional turmoils were all beautifully done and I couldn't be happier with them. Meira's struggles not only to control magic, but to understand her place in the world were very enlightening to her character and extremely relatable--well, not the magic part I suppose--to the reader to gain that emotional and thoughtful empathy. One thing I did wish for was a bit more action in the novel overall. The finale was amazing and extremely well written and paced, though I was a bit confused before I connected all the dots of the mystery, but I wish that we could have had the warrior queen all along. Because let's agree that Meira is a badass, alright? And I just kind of missed this kind of badassery that we had in the first book. But, we also got a good dose of political intrigue that lead to political badassery, so I guess I'm happy with the queen.

I do wish we got to know a bit more about was the individual kingdom politics and more about how they run and how their morals and ethics were formed. We got a small snapshot, but it left me wanting a bit more simply because I love history and diplomatic interactions. And then there's the rest of the crew. Mather did somewhat majorly annoy the shit of me, but he recovered himself. Theron did essentially the opposite, but his character line was a very interesting one to watch disintegrate. Though I still stand by hatred of love triangles, and this one focused on it a lot more than the previous book, I found that if I pushed it aside and focused on Meira's emotions and the overarching story, I could deal with it. It was one of the most detracting things about the book, but it can be ignored in a way some of the other discrepancies can't. Was this book perfect? No. Was it really enjoyable and relatable? Hell yes. Overall I did really like it, it just had several things that were a bit difficult to take at face value, but could be moved around with a little effort. P.S. Thank you guys so much for all the kind words on my reviews, it means a lot, and thanks for sticking with me through some of the reading slumps, exams are kind of terrible that way.

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