Ice Like Fire Review

Just a warning! You probably shouldn't read this review if you haven't read Snow Like Ashes! That book was awesome so you should definitely read that!!!!

Sara Raasch's Ice Like Fire is the sequel to Snow Like Ashes. A few months after the Winterians have been freed and back in their kingdom, Cordell has them mining to pay back their debts. This caused the lost chasm of magic, a powerful but dangerous source, to be discovered. Theron wants to use this magic to stand against threats such as Angra. However, Meira sees the immense dangers of it. When the king of Cordell orders Theron and Meira to go on a journey through the kingdoms to learn how to access the chasm, Meira is trying to find ways to get rid of it. During Meira's duties, Mather tries to secure their kingdom's survival as Cordell's oppression grows.

I didn't like this book as much as the first one. It was mostly a filler book in my opinion and I'm more excited for the third one now! I really appreciated the fact that the trauma the Winterians went through of being enslaved for years was not ignored. That definitely was a prevalent issue, which was awesome so the story wasn't like "We're home and now we're all better and happy again!" I thought that was really well done. It also became a lot more about the politics and Meira trying to learn how to politically protect her kingdom when Cordell has them so far into debt and is demanding immediate repayment. That was a really interesting new focus in this book, as the first one was all about freeing the Winterians. This one is saying how not everything can be solved so quickly, they still have problems.

Going off of that, Meira is awesome! I love how she's struggling to find a median (medium?) between her warrior self and being a queen. She's trying to do what is best for her people. I also love how she is considering what would be best for her kingdom with whoever she marries. Both Mather and Theron annoyed me, so Meira's independence was really great in my opinion. She didn't rely on either of them too much. She's the type of strong female character that I love.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not really sure how this book ended, a lot happened super quickly which confused me a bit. This is probably part of why I'm more excited for the third because I want some things clarified for me.

I gave this book 4/5 stars, while it was a really good book it just didn't blow me away like the first one did. I'm excited for the next book because then I'll know if the ending is as good as I hope it will be!

Ice Like Fire comes out October 13th!