There are marked similarities between Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and Stitching Snow and while both books have completely different tones and are retelling completely different fairytales (as different as fairytales can be), one can’t help but compare the two and find Stitching Snow to lack something that Cinder had in abundance. In a pinch, that’s the summary of Stitching Snow. Now for the actual review. Because Essie has a secret – she is not just a whiz mechanic but also a princess and lone heir to the kingdom that rules all four of the populated planets in the galaxy. This boy repays her by hitting her on the head and kidnapping her to take her away from her home planet to his own. Then a boy crashes his spaceship? space-plane? whatever near the settlement where she lives and Essie feels compelled to help him – to the point that she gets beaten up (but ultimately winning) in a cage fight to earn money to repair his ship.

The planet she lives on doesn’t offer her much but it’s home and she likes it, warts and all. Essie does cage fights against grown men and manages to win most of the time thus earning money and/or supplementing her income to buy things. These drones are loyal to Essie and she keeps them around much like pets. She is some kind of a whiz with coding and machinery and has made the miners’ lives much easier by creative autonomous drones that do much of the more dangerous work in the mines. She lives on a planet dedicated to mining, where women are scarce and life is hard. Expected publication: October 14th 2014 by Disney-HyperionĮssie has a tough life.

Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis