Rating: 5 Stars out of 5
Brier Snow is the heir to the throne of Lirend. He has been imprisoned in the palace, isolated for much of his life. When his stepmother finds a clause in the contract regarding his succession that requires him to fulfil a year-long sabbatical away from the palace he is thrust out into the wildernesses of Aire with an unknown companion.Roland Archer is hired by the queen to supervise her stepson’s year away from the palace. Roland has been alone for a very long time but he never expected to find a reason to live in Brier especially, as he was hired to do something very different. He pushes Brier away because he fears that Brier could never love him if he knew the truth.
But as things stand, fate isn’t done with these two, there’s something quite unexpected brewing and the journey to true love was never going to be easy.
This book is an interpretation of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and it was an amazing one to boot. What I loved about this book was that it managed to retain that fairy tale glow despite being very different from conventional fairy tales. The story also managed to capture a lot of the nuances of its parent story, reworking them in ingenious ways to serve the purposes of the plot. Another aspect of this book I loved was that the legend of Snow White actually exists in Brier’s world albeit with a wonderful, seemingly irrelevant twist. In a way Brier’s opinion on the story sets the stage for Black Snow.
“But how did she come to love the prince who had only loved her for her beauty when the huntsman had loved her for her heart?”
But things don’t turn out to be so easy when the prince is a salve for a broken heart and a relationship between a king and a Thenian huntsman is frowned upon by all the courtiers even without Roland’s secret seeing the light of the day.
Black Snow has a very political background which influences the story a lot, especially the plight of the Thenians and the social hierarchy of Lirend. The story is very rich and there are just so many amazing things happening that it is hard to mention each one.
I absolutely adored this book. I loved how the stage was set for all the events in this book and how the story enfolds. One of the things I liked about this book a lot was how long it was, while a good book is never really long, this book surely has the pages to be considered long and I loved that because not only does that enable the author to explore every nuance that helps set the stage for this epic love story but it also allowed me to really spend time in the world of this book soaking up all the wonderful details.
For me one of the most amazing things in this book is how Brier and Roland fall in love the entire part of the story that takes place in Aire feels especially magical, in an already magical story.
This story spans years so there is a lot going on but the best part of this story being spread across years was that we actually get to see characters grow during this years, especially Brier. Brier starts out as an inexperienced nineteen year old prince isolated by the Queen, completely out of his element in Aire. As he spends more and more time in Aire we see him grow, fall in love and then fight for that love and then we see him as King and it is quite amazing seeing Brier transform from a prince to a King because it really brought forth so much of his hidden potential because in that one moment that he became King he grew the most and it was amazing because in fairy tales we rarely ever see the political aspect of Kingdoms and maybe for good reason because politics is rarely free of treachery and corruption. But I loved how the author managed to make it such a central part of Brier’s development.
This book is kind of my dream come true. A long book which happens to be a romance (as romantic books are very rarely long a fact I never knew I resented till I could get my hands on this book and really appreciate how wonderful it is to be able to spend hours on end immersed in the world of your favourite characters) that is a re-imagining of one of the world’s oldest fairy tales that happens to be an mpreg (a fact that is made possible in this story by that seemingly irrelevant alteration to Snow White’s story as it is told in Lirend).
This book is magic!
Cover Art by Natalya Sorokina. The cover is beautiful. It is so amazing if I am not wrong I think it depicts the scene between Roland and Brier at the festival of Yensira because when I see the cover it reminds me of that scene and I end up squeezing uncontrollably.
Sales Links
Book Details:
ebook, 350 pages
Expected publication: November 7th 2016 by Dreamspinner Press
ISBN 1634777204 (ISBN13: 9781634777209)
Edition LanguageEnglish
Expected publication: November 7th 2016 by Dreamspinner Press
ISBN 1634777204 (ISBN13: 9781634777209)
Edition LanguageEnglish
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 