Originally Posted On The Sassy Book Geek 
 "He will not stop me from washing away the ashes of this kingdom's past and filling our lives with the glorious icy peace of snow." 
 Well this book is a YA Fantasy so therefore I was bound to love it, however, there's a love triangle and whiff of insta-love. Which I'm not fond of. BUT "Snow Like Ashes" managed to make me enjoy it regardless of some of my personal preferences. 
 So let's do a good old fashions Pros/Cons! 
 Pros of Reading "Snow Like Ashes" 
 You'll love the world building. Seriously. Sara Raasch whips up a very interesting world state, perfect for fantasy lovers (like me). The book is set in Primoria, which is a land (Continent? Country? Who Knows?) divided in to eight different kingdoms: The Rhythms and The Seasons. Cool right? Yes it is cool. The Rhythms cycle through all four seasons and The Seasons don't change seasons at all. So Winter is set in an eternal winter, Spring in an eternal spring, and so on. Each kingdom has a monarch who controls that kingdom's conduit. The royal conduits are the only sources of magic in Primoria and can only be used by the ruling monarchs. Four conduits are male blooded and four conduits are female blooded. IT'S COOL. Have I convinced you that the world building is cool yet? 
 Yes, thank you Mr. Stark for agreeing with me. 
 It's VERY fast paced and action packed. Sure the book and I disagreed on some points (like the romance) but it made up for it by being "unputdownable". The action just kept rolling, you're constantly being swept up into one event after the other, it's super exciting. There's plenty of fighting scenes if you're the kind of person who revels in awesome sword swinging, chakram throwing, knife wielding action...like I do. 
 ALL of the characters are complete badasses. Well, except Alysson (Sir's wife), her entire existence revolves around staying at camp while everyone else goes out and kicks ass. She's kind of pointless really , but that's just my opinion. But our MC, Meira, is a total badass (I really like saying badass) she doesn't want to sit around at camp she wants to get out into the world and help regain her kingdom. Her weapon of choice? A chakram. Those of you who don't know what a chakram is (you obviously haven't played "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Which is awesome by the way) here is a lovely picture of one: 
 Look at that awesome flying saucer of death. She isn't a wimp at all, she whips that chakram around like a boss. Then there's Sir and Mather, Sir was a former general to the kingdom of Winter and he's the MOST badass character. There isn't anyone more badass than Sir. I can't even describe how awesome he is, he can kill three men in 0.5 seconds. You could unleash Sir onto the battlefield and have him obliterate an entire army. Ok maybe not but I hope I made my point. He basically leads the other 7 free Winterians in the effort to reclaim their kingdom. And Mather. Mather is the future king of Winter, so he's pretty important, and he's been trained his whole life to be a death machine (by Sir) so he's awesome, and beautiful. Mather is also a potential love interest so of course he's gorgeous. 
 Cons of Reading "Snow Like Ashes" 
 As mentioned waaay earlier in this review, there is a love triangle and a little bit of insta-love. The love triangle isn't super annoying though so I managed to choke it down and keep reading, which is a bonus. I would say if you hate or loath love triangle to still give this book a shot, because it's pretty easy to look past it. Then there's the insta-love which is almost always annoying as a rule, but like with the love triangle you can look past it because the story, the world building, the characters, are interesting enough to keep you reading. 
 You can figure out some of the plot twists whilst reading this book. Although I didn't figure one of them out till a chapter or so before it was revealed, so it's not so predictable that you don't enjoy them or the rest of the book for that matter. 
 Overall, "Snow Like Ashes" is a very entertaining book and I do highly recommend it, even though I had some very minor issues with it. I will definitely be continuing this series, and by that I mean impatiently waiting for the next installment "Ice Like Fire".