Book written by R.C. Lewis, published 2014.
Essie lives a quiet life on the freezing cold, Hoth-like planet of Thanda. A spirited mechanic, Essie spends her days repairing and updating the drones that work down in the merinium mines, splitting her free time between “stitching” (her term for programming and coding) and cage fighting. It isn’t a life of luxury by any means, but Essie is grateful for the lack of excitement. That is until a shuttle from the nearby planet of Garam crashes near her settlement. The pilot is Dane, a treasure hunter seeking the score of a lifetime on Thanda of all places. Dane is handsome, resourceful, and ten times more respectful than the men Essie is used to, but she still finds him suspicious. The wisest thing to do is to help Dane fix his shuttle so he can leave her to her monotonous life as quickly as possible. But Dane has another idea, one that will take Essie on a journey across the universe.
This Snow White rendition reminds me a lot of The Lunar Chronicles. It’s almost as if Cinder and Scarlet have been merged into one character that deals with the combined circumstances of Cress and Winter. I think my favorite thing about the book is the number of creative liberties Lewis took with the original fairytale. She touched on details and plot points that I rarely see in Snow White adaptations. So, while the characters and the world-building were familiar, the plot itself was its own thing. It’s an engaging sci-fi read, one that I encourage fairytale lovers to try.
This book contains violence including sexual assault. I would recommend it to readers sixteen and older.
Here is your spoiler alert! If you haven’t read the book, this is where I humbly recommend you pause and invite you to join us again later!
"Feelings can't be wasted. Knowing they're real for however long they last makes them worth having."
"You're wrong. Feelings can be real without being worth anything at all."
My favorite twist on the tale is definitely the seven dwarves as seven drones. I find that in renditions of Snow White, adapting the dwarves can be a bit tricky because that’s seven additional characters. Depending on how the author translates the story, the seven dwarves can make the story feel crowded or over-complicated. Adapting the dwarves into drones was creative and clever. While each drone still has its own personality, they majorly serve as emotional support for Essie, and Lewis wrote them in such a way that the reader doesn’t need to overexert themselves trying to keep track of them all. Also, Dimwit as Dopey? I love that little correlation.
I also liked Lewis’ translation of the poisoned apple. Instead of a piece of fruit, Lewis changed it into a poisoned necklace with an apple-shaped pendant. In the original fairytale, the Evil Queen attempts to kill Snow White with a poisoned hair comb before she resorts to the apple. It’s not much of a twist, but I liked the combination of the two original attempts that Lewis came up with. It was just enough to pay tribute to the original story, but also provided some space for a more original, dramatic murder attempt for Olivia later on.
And, I gotta say, I am a fan of how Lewis incorporated the Evil Queen’s original demise into Olivia’s downfall. The Evil Queen originally dies from being forced to dance in red-hot shoes. It’s pretty gruesome, but it fits into Lewis’ interpretation of the story, not to mention it was kind of satisfying that Snow White got to take proper revenge for once.
One thing about Lewis’ writing that I found most interesting is how Essie’s emotions were written; it’s mostly all show and hardly any tell. Through first-person narration, we see exactly how Essie reacts to certain scenarios, but she doesn’t actually name her emotions in her train of thought. She’ll just say something along the lines of “this bothered me, but I don’t know why.” And that was particularly interesting when you take Essie's upbringing into account, from her childhood on Windsong to how she raised herself on Thanda. Essie was basically raised to show no emotion. She couldn’t let anyone catch on to the fact that she was being sexually abused as a little girl, and when she moved to Thanda, she couldn’t afford to show any signs of weakness. So, when Dane comes along and tries to open Essie up to her own emotions and reintroduce her to some positive ones, Essie flounders a little bit. Essie is so emotionally repressed that she can’t even give names to the things that she’s feeling. As tragic as that is, it’s excellent writing on Lewis’ part, and I loved it.
On that note, I thought that Essie and Dane’s relationship was really special. Dane obviously fell for her first, but he was patient and willing to wait for Essie to discover how she felt about him. It was the obvious move for Dane to make, seeing as how he knew Essie’s history with men in general, but it was nice to see that his patience and gentle persistence paid off. We watch Essie over the course of a couple of months become friends with Dane, work through feelings of betrayal, become friends again, and then fall in love. It was just a well-written, tried-and-true, totally swoon-worthy, slow-burn romance.
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