Finally, I must express with passion my love of the three main characters- resilient, flawed, brilliant Essie, her prince charming the sweet, noble, swoon-worthy Dane, and their trusty sidekick, Dimwit, a hero among robots if there ever was one. Another plus to the book was its excellent pacing- I loathe to say “page-turner,” but Stitching Snow kept me eagerly flipping along, without being so fast that I lost the plot. It has the expected spaceships and robots, but there’s a blessed lack of sci-babble and contrived explanations of futuristic elements. Stitching Snow is what I like to call “sci fi for the common man,” in that it has enough sci-fi elements to qualify for the genre without being hardcore Star Trek fanfiction. Lately I seem to be reading a disproportionate amount of space opera fairytale adaptations (pardon the genre hipstering) and I have developed certain standards. As a result, I went into this book having no expectations, but if I had, I’ve no doubt Snow would have exceeded them. I didn’t read the book jacket before I started it for several reasons: first, the librarian who handed it to me is one I trust not to hand me garbage, and second, the cover looks really really cool, and while I shouldn’t judge books by their covers, a pretty book is very compelling. Stitching Snow is a finely-woven tale of courage, love, self-confidence, respect, and above all, space badassery. Satisfied, exhilarated, kind of want to become an astronaut-slash-cage fighter-slash-computer programmer, low-key praying to the book gods for a sequel.

Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis