Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - L'Hiver de la sorcière

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 :)

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fatherprozac's review against another edition

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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.

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ehmannky's review against another edition

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dark emotional 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

4.5

A wonderful end to the series. Winter of the Witch delves straight into the action, without any of the slow build up to Vasya's main plot that the previous two books did. And it starts out intense, with Vasya nearly killed by a mob spurred on by the corrupted priest Konstantin. I did kind of miss the meticulous world-building, but this is probably the most focused of the series in terms of plot. But I forgive much because I loved the relationship between Morozko and Vasya getting the room to really grow. Also, Vasya's PTSD from the beginning of the book was rendered so vividly and painfully, and I liked seeing a protagonist struggle with doing what she had to do with that disorder. It just makes her feel all the more real and brave.

The only thing I didn't particularly love was that it felt that there were essentially two parts that felt like an ending-one part in the middle and the other was the actual end of the book. I don't want to spoil it, but I felt that after one of the major forces of antagonism in Vasya's life are defeated, there was a 50 ish page gap where the book felt like it sort of stalled. Overall, I didn't hate it and I get thematically why this split exists and the meaning behind showing that "defeating evil" is not enough for a victory in a complex world, but it felt odd in a book that's so action-focused to have this weird lull roughly 2/3rds of the way through.

Overall, extremely satisfied with this series and its ending, and good god

was it satisfying to see Konstantin die. Still not sure how I feel about Solovey being resurrected in the last 10 pages of the book, but it is a very fairy tale twist so I did appreciate it.

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