Snow Like Ashes, by Sara Raasch
$1.99 Kindle Sale! ($9.99)
It’s true. Sara Raasch started writing Snow Like Ashes when she was twelve. Want proof? We hunted down a video of the author holding up the first hand-written draft and took a screenshot. She reads a page from it in the video. We’re convinced. (Isn’t she adorable, btw?)
The decade she took to build this world shows in its magic. And in its politics. We found one reviewer who wrote down all eight territories, along with their rulers and their “conduits” (i.e. special magic items), just to keep them straight. To make things even more complicated, four of the conduits can only be wielded by men, and the other four by women.
(Wait. Is that determined by biological sex or by gender identification? Dunno. We haven’t read it yet. We just now bought it on sale. That’s how we find these deals. We’re actually shopping for ourselves and then telling you about it. Probably because we don’t have enough friends.)