by Silvana G. Sanchez
A Snow White retelling with seven mages where Snow fights to reclaim her throne and the heart of a prince. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Let’s find out!
Ready if you like: fast-paced fantasy, high fantasy, dark fantasy, fairytale retellings, whimsical storytelling, steamy romance with just a bit of spice.
Maleath Snow is the only heir to Whitehall and she’s running for her life. After being framed by the Evil Queen, aka her stepmother, Maleath has to flee her homeland before the queen can catch her and take her heart. Maleath’s only hope is to hide and she finds herself in the land of the fae at the mercy of The Seven. A band of mages banished from their lands, The Seven and their ward, a runaway prince, might be the only hope Maleath has defeating the Evil Queen and reclaiming her rightful place on the throne.
This book was so fast-paced that you didn’t have much time to wonder about anything before getting answers. That’s generally a plus, but this is so straightforward that before any tension can build, you’re at a resolution and next step in the plot. I wanted to like this book so much, but we never get enough time to really get settled in the storyline.
It starts out with a flippant and racy princess brooding about her new stepmother and then we just get directly into the Evil Queen’s plot and it just keeps driving forward from there. For starting out with such a steamy scene, there isn’t a lot of spice on the page. I was expecting more, but we get a lot of insta-lust and dreamy thoughts about the prince. There were some introspective times for Maleath and those were fairly well done but mostly we get linearly defined scene progression. Something just happened… it probably relates directly to whatever they just did in the last chapter, no big twists no surprises just onward to the end.
As much as we could have had more space in the plot, it’s not my biggest issue. The writing feels overworked. It has a high fantasy tone that is sometimes in opposition to the whimsical, animated fairytale feel. What we end up with is a lot of repetition of fancy words and clunky, stylized prose. This was a huge stumbling block for me. If the style was more consistent and less focused on trying to be extravagant then the story could shine through and have space for the characters to grow.
Overall, if you want a high fantasy fairytale, that’s very fast-paced and straightforward, and feels fancy yet familiar with just a little bit of adult spice then you’ll probably love this book. I’ll give it 2.5 stars, rounding to 3 because I did like the retelling aspects and character dynamics.
Thank you to BookSirens and Silvana G. Sanchez for a free copy of this book for review.
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