Did you want another re-imagining of a classic fairy tale? No?
TOO BAD.
An amazon summary, "Lorelai Diederich, crown princess and fugitive at large, has one mission: kill the wicked queen who took both the Ravenspire throne and the life of her father. To do that, Lorelai needs to use the one weapon she and Queen Irina have in common—magic. She’ll have to be stronger, faster, and more powerful than Irina, the most dangerous sorceress Ravenspire has ever seen.
In the neighboring kingdom of Eldr, when Prince Kol’s father and older brother are killed by an invading army of magic-wielding ogres, the second-born prince is suddenly given the responsibility of saving his kingdom. To do that, Kol needs magic of his own—and the only way to get it is to make a deal with the queen of Ravenspire, promise to become her personal huntsman—and bring her Lorelai’s heart.
But Lorelai is nothing like Kol expected—beautiful, fierce, and unstoppable—and despite dark magic, Lorelai is drawn in by the passionate and troubled king. Fighting to stay one step ahead of the dragon huntsman—who she likes far more than she should—Lorelai does everything in her power to ruin the wicked queen. But Irina isn’t going down without a fight, and her final move may cost the princess the one thing she still has left to lose." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
This is a re-imagining of Snow White. As such, it comes with that weird sense of "I know how this story should go" and the constant looking for clues as to how it's similar to the original tale, but, really, I feel like this book could have easily been it's own book without the premise of being a re-imagining of Snow White. There were enough original/unique elements, and a few that were largely ignored about the original tale, that this really could have been it's own story.
That being said, Lorelai is Snow White in this case. The whole turmoil starts when Lorelai's stepmother takes over the kingdom when Lorelai was a small child. She manages to escape the castle with her younger brother with the help of the Captain of the Guard and unfortunately her father, the king, dies. The other thing about Lorelai, she's one of two magic users in the kingdom (they have a funky name of them but I'm not going through the pages to dig it out). The other magic user is her stepmother. Her stepmother uses her magic to gain control and keep control of the kingdom.
Lorelai, her brother, and the captain of the guard are doing small rebellions around the kingdom to fight back for the people. To work on crafting the best plan to take back the kingdom.
Meanwhile, Kol is the prince of a neighboring kingdom, who has been kicked out of school...again. He's throwing parties in the castle, making the most of his time before his parents come back from their tour of the war front with his older brother (heir to the throne), and he's punished again. ...but that changes when his parents and older brother are killed on the war front. The war front is their kingdom of people who can turn into dragons, against armies of ogres who wield magic. One of the first things Kol does as King, is determine he needs the help of a magic user to vanquish the ogres. He goes to Lorelai's kingdom to seek the help of the queen to get rid of the ogres, but the queen's help comes at a terrible cost, one that Kol agrees to pay.
That's enough summary.
The story is told from Lorelai and Kol's points of view. The dual narration plays really well off of each other, and offer unique enough views of the world that I didn't get bored reading either of them. I also enjoyed Kol's two-hearted nature of having of dragon's and human's heart. I was upset about Lorelai and her stepmother having the only magic in the world... but it also played it out okay? I wish there had been more magic users though, not to add a third huge power, but just to offer further perspective on the magic of the world.
I also really loved how Lorelai was compassionate, and that plays through every page she graces. The story was well written, but, because it's a re-imagining of Snow White, I also don't want to make it a recommended book. I think it changed the original story too much, there was no themes of dwarves, and it wasn't dark enough for the content presented. There were some seriously bad things going on and happening, and yes there was horror, but there was still almost too much hope. The tone didn't match with the contents of the story. It was a nice book.
Happy reading!
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