Stitching Snow by R. C. Lewis

  Published: October 14th

Publisher: Disney Hyperion

Pages: 338

Copy: From Publisher through Edelweiss

Summary: Goodreads

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

Review

Apart from the slightly odd cover, which makes sense after you read the book, I really enjoyed this space fantasy version of everyone's favourite fairy tale - Snow White.  This time around the seven dwarves include Cusser, Crank and Dimwit (sorry I don't remember the other names) and they are enhanced mining drones.  Dimwit in particular is very funny.

Our main character Snow or, as she is usually called, Essie is barely scraping by on a mining planet by tinkering with computer programming on drones or cage fighting for extra credits. She's a real smart and resourceful cookie.  So right from the start readers can see this is not your usual Snow White.  Prince Charming doesn't actually rescue Essie, he kidnaps her instead, which I thought was a nice twist, and there is absolutely no instalove going on, which was a relief. When you are reading a retelling, it's easy to start expecting things to happen and it was rather refreshing in Stitching Snow that the 'expected' events were for the most part, disguised and not all quite so easy to recognize instantly.

I loved Ms Lewis' style of writing and found myself reluctant to put my Ipad down until I had finished.  The story is tense and quite exciting in places, with a sly humour being injected by the drones and a nice realistic romance to keep us happy.  Lots of fun for fairy tale fans, but also lots of fun for fans of space fantasy.  A great read.