Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - De Winter van de Heks

Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

De Winter van de Heks by Katherine Arden

36 reviews

andra_mihaela_s's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

From me, The Winter of the Witch gets 5 stars!

This series encompasses everything I want in folklore inspired fantasy, and this final book...is just perfect 🥰

After the events in The Girl in the Tower, Moscow and it's people are looking for someone to blame...and this is all you need to dive into this #magicalworld again!

CW: witch hunting, mentions of slavery, war, death, horror elements, cruelty and death of animals, weaponized religion, extreme discrepancy between genders, plague, etc.

I won't try to dissect this final installment as I usually do...instead I'll let myself ramble about what comes to mind.
Obviously, my #rating reflects my belief that this book is close to perfect.

It opens with strong repercussions for our MC, and it goes to give you blow after blow of flawless writing, top notch atmosphere and amazing pacing!

I really felt that the pacing and atmosphere were just right for each scene. As most of the action takes place at midnight, I will poetically describe this novel as a dream of lost memories...

Coincidently, the background music for this series matches my description : Memories by @fludjy, creator of the yt channel EternalDepth...you're welcome and happy listening 😉

Back to our story : important parts are driven by individual character growth, powerful emotions, consequences, political repercussions, supernatural and human elements.

With this being said...my favorites are as follows : Vasya, Morozko, Konstantin, Sasha, Medved, Pozhar,Lady Midnight and Marya.

I love every part and every character, so...that list isn't complete...

Characters :
Say what you want about Konstantin...and yes, his greed and hate is awful..but I couldn't help myself and cried 😭...maybe that's why I love Medved as well...

Solovey...cried and eventually came to peace with it...

Morozko....perfect portretization of Winter...every time he was on the page I felt I the middle of a forest at midnight.

Sasha...great brother and man...now I'm obsessed with his real life counterpart 😅

Vasya...well...she grows with EVERY SINGLE PAGE 🥰...as she should!🥰...I'm soo happy I met her...that's all I have to say..

As I said above Medved came to be dear to me...maybe as I saw his connection with our MCs...and how lonely eternity is...chaos is life, as winter is eternity.

Let's switch it up and say a few words about the action : I really loved how Katherine Arden moulded her historical fantasy with Russian folklore and actual historical events...I was there at Kulikovo..and I cried 😅

Even if I didn't mention Dmitry Ivanovich as a favorite.. His role and the perspective he offered the reader completed this magical story with the necessary elements of the real world!

Favorite scenes: the pyre , everything up to the Lake and there🤭, Kulikovo, at the edge of the lands of winter, at the campfire..all of them😅🤷‍♀️🤭

This is it! Please read this trilogy and lose yourself in a winter Midnight😌...don't forget to stop by the Lake😉

Content Warnings

beesknees's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging hopeful tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This final installment of the Winternight trilogy brings all of Vasya’s journey and lessons together. This finale is pretty fast paced, compared to its predecessors. Arden intelligently weaves real pieces of Russian history into this story, while always honoring the magic and romance that has been present since book one. I cried at a specific scene near the end, and then cried again.

Content Warnings

basil_touche's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book certainly fulfilled the expectations I had from the previous book. Arden's writing style flows best in this final installment of the Winternight Triology, where chyerti and man alike join forces to protect their home. Chyerti appear much more in the plot here than last time, with the introduction of Midnight being a fascinating way of introducing more of Russian folklore (I was particually fond of Deb Grib, love that he was insistent that he was Vasya's first ally) and a new means of transportation for the protagonist, though not an easy one at first.

I have to admit though, I didn't really care for the romance between Vasya and Morozko. Their relationship felt underdeveloped for most of the novel but as characters I felt that they were still great. It just felt to me that there wasn't much build up to it.

I was surprised when they defeated Medved and the narrative still went on, however I quite like that Vasya freed Medved to assist her in fighting the war. He casually tries to make her lose her mind but they do have a somewhat begruding comradeship by the end (Medved's sly comments at everybody that made me smirk a fair bit).

There were some things that I felt were too quickly explained and others where I wished there were more details about but overall this is a fine conclusion to the triology.

Content Warnings

lisa_m's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was the perfect conclusion to the trilogy! It truly got better and better. I really liked the first book, loved the second and this one was just amazing.
I don't think I understand every theme that was explored in this book so I won't even try to analyse it. I just read this book for pleasure so I didn't make notes or anything. I can say that there is definitely loads of things to analyse and think about though.
I loved the way the myths were mixed with real events and people. It just feels like an alternative universe.

This series is officially one of my all time favourites. The writing is amazing, as is the storytelling. The characters range from good, to horrible, to amazing, to very morally ambiguous. The exploration of good & bad and if there even is such a thing in the first place was done so well. This book had a twist I truly did not expect. After the 3rd big chapter I thought everything was over (because in every other fantasy book, that is how the story ends), everything that came after was just so unexpected and amazing. I can't say more without saying too much and spoiling the book so I won't. This is truly a series you should know as little as possible about before reading.

Also I was surprised by how fresh this book felt. I have read so many fantasy books by now and I can enjoy a book while still realising how tropy and cliquee it is. This book felt like something new and exciting though.

I can only highly recommend this book! Especially if you are interested in russian folklore :)

Content Warnings

thewildmageslibrary's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.5

One thing I really love about this series is that there's not really any time gaps between books. Bam, you're right back where you left off. In this case, "in a pickle".
I absolutely adore Vasya's growth, especially in this book. Can't say much without spoilers, so just read these.

CW: same "it's set in the 14th century, so" as the others

Content Warnings

ktkeps's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

kenzielireads's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

fatherprozac's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This was probably the last thing I expected from the events of the first book. Truthfully, I had wanted Vasya to run away from it all and travel the world like she planned to. I admit I was disappointed by the second book's decision to turn inward toward her siblings. I think that disappointment probably puts a bias on my mediocre experience with this last installment. This third story is a good one and I did enjoy my time reading it, but it suffers a little from treating Vasya as untouchable and some questionable ethics.

We are pretty much outright told that no man can resist Vasya's wild/unique charm; while that's something seen in the behavior of other men in the previous books, making it some kind of general rule that gets her out of more than one life threatening situation feels pretty cheap. I also don't feel great, or even good at all, about a 17 year old feeling forced by a dire situation to have sex with an ancient winter god. I was already iffy about their relationship but this book pushed it from questionable to straight up ick for me. Not loving that the only queer relationship in the entire series is between the two villains either. Finally, if we're going to undo some of Vasya's greatest development into adulthood by bringing Solovey back, at least give us more time with him.

Content Warnings

fiveredhens's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

still enjoyed it but the pacing was bizarre. it felt waaay under-edited

Content Warnings

maeverose's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Honestly, after sitting with it for a while, I wouldn’t be surprised if I bump this up to a five star upon re-read.. (I initially gave it a 3.75) but here’s my review from goodreads (a bit edited):

I feel like this review is going to sound really negative but I did really like it overall (obviously, based on my rating). I was a bit disappointed initially after finishing it. I didn't enjoy reading it quite as much as the other two. To start, this one is very bleak. More-so than the first two, that is. Especially at the beginning and the end. Which obviously is no fault of the book; I think those things made perfect sense for the story, it just wasn't as fun to read. I was also disappointed with how little Morozko was in this one, being as he's one of my favorite characters.

I also wasn’t a huge fan of the team up with medved at the end, personally

In the end I really like how everything wrapped up and I don't have any issues with how the story played out, I think it actually worked out really well. I just didn't have as much fun reading it. I did cry at the end though so that counts for something I guess. Also Ded Grib must be protected at all costs. Smol precious boy.

Content Warnings

More...