Audiobook Review – Frost Like Night (Snow Like Ashes, Book 3) by Sara Raasch, Narrated by Kate Rudd, Nick Podehl, and Eileen Stevens (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 12 hours and 22 minutes (496 pages)
Publisher: HarperAudio
Release Date: September 20, 2016
ASIN: B01KGI5MI0
Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in the Snow Like Ashes Trilogy
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

“Angra is alive, his Decay is spreading—and no one is safe.

Meira will do anything to save her world. With Angra trying to break through her mental defenses, she desperately needs to learn to control her own magic—so when the leader of a mysterious Order from Paisly offers to teach her, she jumps at the chance. But the true solution to stopping the Decay lies in a labyrinth deep beneath the Season Kingdoms. To defeat Angra, Meira will have to enter the labyrinth, destroy the very magic she’s learning to control—and make the biggest sacrifice of all.

Mather will do anything to save his queen. He needs to rally the Children of the Thaw, find Meira—and finally tell her how he really feels. But with a plan of attack that leaves no kingdom unscathed and a major betrayal within their ranks, winning the war—and protecting Meira—slips farther and farther out of reach.

Ceridwen will do anything to save her people. Angra had her brother killed, stole her kingdom, and made her a prisoner. But when she’s freed by an unexpected ally who reveals a shocking truth behind Summer’s slave trade, Ceridwen must take action to save her true love and her kingdom, even if it costs her what little she has left.

As Angra unleashes the Decay on the world, Meira, Mather, and Ceridwen must bring the kingdoms of Primoria together…or lose everything.”

This is the third and final book in the Frost Like Night series. I enjoyed it but not as much as the first two books in the series. There wasn’t a lot here that I found surprising and the majority of the book is focused on the coming (and final) war between Angra and the other Kingdoms. I am not a huge fan of “war” books in general.

I listened to this on audiobook and it was okay. I liked that the three different viewpoints (Mather, Meira, and Ceridwen) are done by different narrators. However, most of the book was from Meira’s POV and I thought her narrator was a bit annoying to listen to; she was just a little too desperate and dramatic sounding about everything.

The book itself is fairly predictable, but I enjoyed the journey. I do like that Meira was smart and decided to take time off to train in her abilities (rather than instantly learn how to use them). Although the fact that Meira masters both her emotional issues and her magic abilities in a week is pretty unbelievable.

We hear quite a bit from Ceridwen in this book as well. I enjoyed her as a character and thought she counterbalanced Mather and Meira’s stories nicely.

I continued to be impressed by the world-building here; this world blew me away in the first book and the impact is less now that we are familiar with this world but it is still av ery creative world that I enjoyed reading about. I am not going to say much about the whole Mather, Theron, Meira thing because of spoilers.

Again, I don’t know if it was the narration or what but everything in this book was just a bit too dramatic for me. There are lots of speeches by the characters and you get to listen to them angst over everything that is happening over and over again. This was probably what annoyed me the most about this book.

Overall this was a good conclusion to the series. Things are wrapped up nicely and readers should be happy with how everything ties up. I do think it got a bit wordy and overly dramatic at times; there are a lot of speeches and long ramblings by characters on their thoughts and feelings about things that didn’t need to be there. I would recommend this series to fantasy fans; the first two books in the series were spectacular and this one (while not as good) did a good job of wrapping things up.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– New Release Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
– Audiobook Reading Challenge