libraryrabbit's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
laurenjodi's review against another edition
4.0
The Winter King
4 Stars
A very entertaining fantasy romance with intricate and detailed world building, engaging characters and a steamy and delightful romance.
That said, some aspects of the plot are predictable (such as the identity of the villain), and the book could have been 75 pages shorter with some of the long-winded descriptions removed (although this is a hallmark of fantasy writing so its not too bad.).
All in all, an enjoyable story and I look forward to reading the sequel, which has only recently come out.
4 Stars
A very entertaining fantasy romance with intricate and detailed world building, engaging characters and a steamy and delightful romance.
That said, some aspects of the plot are predictable (such as the identity of the villain), and the book could have been 75 pages shorter with some of the long-winded descriptions removed (although this is a hallmark of fantasy writing so its not too bad.).
All in all, an enjoyable story and I look forward to reading the sequel, which has only recently come out.
inadaze's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
jillm26's review
adventurous
medium-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
halcyon_rising's review against another edition
2.0
Note: I first skimmed bits of this story before I turned back to the beginning and started again there. I’m not going to lie: I got angry and started typing up everything that upset me because I had seen it somewhere else already. I do not know if my feeling like that is justified or not, I’ll let you be the judge.
Having said that, I’ll continue by saying that I recognise that certain themes, storylines and names are of course not copyrighted to one author, but I found the occurrence of them here together a little bit too much to bear, and definitely in these days of popularity of that same concept somewhere else.
This is my very first story by this author, and will probably be the last.
Spoiler warning: this open summary is basically a synopsis of my issues with this book:
What does this story contain? A winter versus summer theme, the North versus the South; ice battles including magical puppeteering of the dead by an Ice King who will attack humanity with an army of walking dead, Giants, wolves, greater magical wolf like creatures, bears, etc.; magical swords; ready to backstab Freys, Blackwoods,Lannisters – oops, not those, a Bron, Ros, Var- er, Valik, Hodo- er, Hodri, etc. Oh, and a romance! Mustn’t forget Rhaegar and Lyanna! No, shoot, Wynter and Storm. In short, everything you have already (somewhat) read and will still (supposedly) read in George R.R. Martin’s naturally better written A Song of Ice and Fire series!
So, that was the short version which hopefully quite clearly states what went on in my mind when reading this book. For a longer explanation of the above, and some general notes on the book, I’ll jump behind a spoiler tag:
We begin three years in the past, up North, with white haired and pale eyed Wynter Atrialan, king of the cold Wintercraig. He is about to get married to a woman named Elka, but she runs off with Falcon Coruscate, the crown prince of the neighbouring country.
ASoIaF comparisons:
° pale eyed, white haired Wynter Atrialan = purple eyed, silver haired Rhaegar Targaryen (look: Targaryen is pronounced like Alterian – *shakes it a bit more to take the cadence out* Atrialan)
° Wintercraig = Winterfell/the heart of the Northern kingdom
° Elka = compare the name to Rhaegar’s wife Elia
° Elka runs away from her unwanted marriage, with a crown prince = Lyanna Stark runs away from her unwanted marriage (to the Storm Lord), with the crown prince, Rhaegar Targaryen
° Falcon = the sigil of House Arryn, where Ned Stark, Lyanna’s brother, was fostered
After Wynter’s fiancée runs off and his younger brother and only heir gets murdered by the crown prince, he goes to the temple to seek the power of the Ice Heart, something that will actually turn him into ice from within after a certain time.
ASoIaF comparisons:
° Rhaegar’s mad and suspicious father King Aerys II had Lord Rickard Stark and his first heir Brandon murdered. The demand for the heads of the next heir, Ned Stark, and his foster brother, the Storm Lord in question, made House Arryn call the banners and start the war
° Ice Heart = wait for it
Three years later Wynter has won his war thanks to said power, and arrives at King Verdan Coruscate’s palace in Summerlea with the demand to marry one of his daughters so he can get an heir, feel love for something and break the powers of the Ice Heart, which is close to swallowing him.
He ends up with Khamsin Coruscate aka Storm, the only one there who tried to defy him – with her weathermage powers, the only one with an attitude. There’s your Lyanna Stark. Wynter is really into his Storm, as much as Rhaegar had to be to run off with Lyanna.
ASoIaF and other comparisons:
° Summerlea = should be more capital King’s Landing-y, I guess, but theme-wise it is closer to Summerhall, a Targaryen castle in the Stormlands)
° Storm = Lyanna would be Mrs. Storm Lord after her marriage, but perhaps the comparison is more there with X-Men’s Storm, as that’s what Khamsin turns into
Anyway, fast forward to the wedding. They have to hold out their wrists to show their family birth marks upon them and put them together. Summerlea’s sign is a Rose that gives off heat, and Wintercraig’s mark is a pale white wolf’s head that feels cool.
ASoIaF comparisons:
° Rose = Lyanna Stark was fond of the blue winter rose
° heat = the fire in aSoIaF, depending on how that title will work out. Targaryens are associated with fire (dragons) and one of their ancestral swords, Blackfyre. (Note that Starks and Targaryens have switched places/themes in this fic)
° pale white wolf = a (dire)wolf is House Stark’s sigil, and a pale white wolf reminds me of Ghost, Jon’s direwolf
° cool = the ice in aSoIaF, the Starks are associated with ice for their icy facial expressions, and their sword named Ice. Ice zombies (Others) can be currently found in the higher North
Wynter has a silver helmet in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head. I don’t remember if the Starks had that – they probably did, but the Targaryens sure had three-headed dragon helmets.
Now, besides the above aSoIaF-like themes and names, can we find more of those in this fic? Yup:
° Wynter’s horse Hodri = Hodor, or Hodor + Rickard/Rickon (Bran sure is using him like a horse!)
° Bron = Bronn
° Wynter’s old friend Galacia Frey (ready to stab him in the back should he lose control of his powers) = sure sounds like a Frey to me, with the backstabbing! (How ya doin’, Robb?)
° Wynter’s White Sword/almost Master of Whisperers, Lord Valik (creates distrust between Wynter and Storm) = Lord Varys, created distrust between King Aerys and son Rhaegar
° Lady Ros = whore Ros, a character exclusive to the tv show
° Ancient hero’s magical sword Blazing = Azor Ahai’s legendary sword Lightbringer, or even Dawn (Storm is her ancestor’s worthy heir, and Azor Ahai is said to be reborn as well)
° Riverfall = Riverrun
° Blackwood = Blackwood
Really, one of the only things missing so far seems to be the Wall (although, mountains in general?), but rest assured, what lies behind it is still present in this story. And since you’ve waited long enough, let’s, shall we?
If Wynter loses control over the powers the Ice Heart gives him, if his heart turns into ice, his body gets taken over by Rorjak, the Ice King, who is God-like (The Great Other).
Rorjak has the power to make the dead rise again (Others), has minions like 15-20 feet tall Frost Giants, and his army exists of white wolf like monsters with red eyes called garm, animated dead humans, wolves, bears… Now, what are the aSoIaF Others going to have in their armies? Yup, giants, direwolves, animated dead humans, wolves, bears,…
A quote that reminds me even more of aSoIaF:
“Oh, Valik, tell the queen about the time you wrestled that boar to its knees,” or “My king, tell her about the time you found the ice dragon’s nest.
Lyanna’s intended Storm Lord was eventually taken down by a boar (though he got the boar as well), and the ice dragon is a constellation in the Northern sky, and also a children’s tale about an ice dragon and its rider that might or might not have existed for real in the world of aSoIaF.
~*~
Now, apart from the comparisons that can be drawn between this book and a certain other series, what is this story like?
Long, very looooooooong. Too long, in fact.
For those of you who occasionally read other people’s reviews, you might have at one time come across people saying they had to forgive the author for having the couple fight (the cliché stupid misunderstanding that doesn’t get resolved because they didn’t talk it out) and then there’s the anticipated break-up, and the getting back together and everything was fine after that, since it also was the end of the book. Well, this book features that as well, or rather as well as two married people can do that. Continuously.
Remember when I said that Wynter wanted to have an heir to love as fast as possible, since his days were numbered? Well, it means that he never planned to love his wife (I guess she’d be considered treacherous by default since she’s from a conquered land). In fact, if said wife wasn’t able to produce said heir – for him to love so he could melt the Ice Heart – within a year, he’d just get rid of her and marry one of the three remaining daughters of King Verdan. Problem is, Khamsin’s handmaiden supposedly overheard that talk and told her. Guess who’s not doing to declare her love for her husband within oh, let’s say the first 500 pages after they get married?
Wynter has been severely burned once before (Elka), and he’s determined not to have that happen again by letting Khasmin get too close to him (getting hurt again might make him less human and that means less time for that heir). Even though they’re pretty hot for each other in bed, as in all night long, once he’s out of there he turns cold again, but with the occasional hot mixed in, so Khamsin doesn’t know who the real Wynter is, either.
Both seem to have good reasons for not declaring their feelings for one another, but since the book is nearly 600 pages long, too much is just too much. So repetitive and therefore boring. A person can only read x amount of times how a guy uses every excuse he can find to turn away from his girl. Ugh. Should have cut that down.
Speaking of the hot sex scenes, though:
“This time you finish it.”
“How?” She was willing. The ache was there and building. She wanted more than his finger inside her. Her hand clenched tighter around his shaft, moving up and down in a rhythm that instinctively matched his own strokes.
“Mount me. As you would a horse.”
“I don’t know how. I’ve never ridden a horse.”
It just reminded me of some Rhaegar and Lyanna art, I cannot help it. Bummer is I probably cannot link it here. ;-)
For those who would perhaps look: it’s the third one. Poor Rhaegar. :-P
There’s a couple of weird things going on in this book.
- One of my issues is that the king, who’d want his queen pregnant and then unharmed for the duration of said pregnancy, right, agrees to let her take horseback riding lessons. Now, what’s that thing you need to stop immediately when you’re pregnant? Yup, horseback riding.
- After a few lessons, she can ride for hours on end. Ever jumped off a horse when you’d been sitting on it for hours? Add to that the cold weather of the Northern land. Feel like ice skating right after that? Don’t think so either.
- At a certain point in the story, Khamsin needs to summon lightning into her body to make it grow extra warm so she can channel that into a nearly-consumed Wynter whose body is frozen:
She raised her arms. Warmth became heat. Heat became fire. Fire became a wild, consuming blaze that rushed through every cell of her body. The air around her went violet, glowing with energy. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and loosed the bonds holding the lightning in check.
The sky went brilliant white. A lightning bolt, thick as the trunk of a tree, shot from the sky, racing down the tendrils of plasma she’d sent up into the clouds.
Her body shuddered, arching towards the sky as the bolt speared and seared her. For one instant, her entire being seemed to dissolve and scatter to the winds. Mind, flesh, thought, breath, blood, all flew apart in a split second, only to draw back into a cohesive whole the next. She rode the heat, the pain, the wildness as the lightning’s energy raced through her body, seeking an outlet. She would not give it that. Heat consumed her, hotter than the sun. She screamed in agony but held fast.
Sounds healthy, right? A page or two further they mention to her she’s pregnant.
I’m going to stop with my review here, as the ending is kind of already hinted at all over the place, and therefore a rehash isn’t necessary (nor do I feel like adding more).
So, after all this, what kind of rating will I give this book? I postponed it until I was ready with my review, but I think I’ll go with 2 stars for the following reasons:
I do think the general writing style is better than 2 stars (perhaps a 3 or 3.5 star), but taking into account that I not only got frustrated with the, to me, obvious comparisons to a book series I’ve been reading continuously for a year or 2 now, but also the really odd mistakes of letting a queen ride horses while pregnant with the heirs and the too fantasy I-can-get-repeatedly-hit-by-lightning-and-not-lose-my-babies, and the too silly hot/cold romance story because it needs to get dragged out till the ending which is hundreds of pages later, I think 2 should be reasonable.
Having said that, I’ll continue by saying that I recognise that certain themes, storylines and names are of course not copyrighted to one author, but I found the occurrence of them here together a little bit too much to bear, and definitely in these days of popularity of that same concept somewhere else.
This is my very first story by this author, and will probably be the last.
Spoiler warning: this open summary is basically a synopsis of my issues with this book:
What does this story contain? A winter versus summer theme, the North versus the South; ice battles including magical puppeteering of the dead by an Ice King who will attack humanity with an army of walking dead, Giants, wolves, greater magical wolf like creatures, bears, etc.; magical swords; ready to backstab Freys, Blackwoods,
So, that was the short version which hopefully quite clearly states what went on in my mind when reading this book. For a longer explanation of the above, and some general notes on the book, I’ll jump behind a spoiler tag:
Spoiler
This story is filled with aSoIaF things like you wouldn’t believe.We begin three years in the past, up North, with white haired and pale eyed Wynter Atrialan, king of the cold Wintercraig. He is about to get married to a woman named Elka, but she runs off with Falcon Coruscate, the crown prince of the neighbouring country.
ASoIaF comparisons:
° pale eyed, white haired Wynter Atrialan = purple eyed, silver haired Rhaegar Targaryen (look: Targaryen is pronounced like Alterian – *shakes it a bit more to take the cadence out* Atrialan)
° Wintercraig = Winterfell/the heart of the Northern kingdom
° Elka = compare the name to Rhaegar’s wife Elia
° Elka runs away from her unwanted marriage, with a crown prince = Lyanna Stark runs away from her unwanted marriage (to the Storm Lord), with the crown prince, Rhaegar Targaryen
° Falcon = the sigil of House Arryn, where Ned Stark, Lyanna’s brother, was fostered
After Wynter’s fiancée runs off and his younger brother and only heir gets murdered by the crown prince, he goes to the temple to seek the power of the Ice Heart, something that will actually turn him into ice from within after a certain time.
ASoIaF comparisons:
° Rhaegar’s mad and suspicious father King Aerys II had Lord Rickard Stark and his first heir Brandon murdered. The demand for the heads of the next heir, Ned Stark, and his foster brother, the Storm Lord in question, made House Arryn call the banners and start the war
° Ice Heart = wait for it
Three years later Wynter has won his war thanks to said power, and arrives at King Verdan Coruscate’s palace in Summerlea with the demand to marry one of his daughters so he can get an heir, feel love for something and break the powers of the Ice Heart, which is close to swallowing him.
He ends up with Khamsin Coruscate aka Storm, the only one there who tried to defy him – with her weathermage powers, the only one with an attitude. There’s your Lyanna Stark. Wynter is really into his Storm, as much as Rhaegar had to be to run off with Lyanna.
ASoIaF and other comparisons:
° Summerlea = should be more capital King’s Landing-y, I guess, but theme-wise it is closer to Summerhall, a Targaryen castle in the Stormlands)
° Storm = Lyanna would be Mrs. Storm Lord after her marriage, but perhaps the comparison is more there with X-Men’s Storm, as that’s what Khamsin turns into
Anyway, fast forward to the wedding. They have to hold out their wrists to show their family birth marks upon them and put them together. Summerlea’s sign is a Rose that gives off heat, and Wintercraig’s mark is a pale white wolf’s head that feels cool.
ASoIaF comparisons:
° Rose = Lyanna Stark was fond of the blue winter rose
° heat = the fire in aSoIaF, depending on how that title will work out. Targaryens are associated with fire (dragons) and one of their ancestral swords, Blackfyre. (Note that Starks and Targaryens have switched places/themes in this fic)
° pale white wolf = a (dire)wolf is House Stark’s sigil, and a pale white wolf reminds me of Ghost,
Spoiler
likely their son° cool = the ice in aSoIaF, the Starks are associated with ice for their icy facial expressions, and their sword named Ice. Ice zombies (Others) can be currently found in the higher North
Wynter has a silver helmet in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head. I don’t remember if the Starks had that – they probably did, but the Targaryens sure had three-headed dragon helmets.
Now, besides the above aSoIaF-like themes and names, can we find more of those in this fic? Yup:
° Wynter’s horse Hodri = Hodor, or Hodor + Rickard/Rickon (Bran sure is using him like a horse!)
° Bron = Bronn
° Wynter’s old friend Galacia Frey (ready to stab him in the back should he lose control of his powers) = sure sounds like a Frey to me, with the backstabbing! (How ya doin’, Robb?)
° Wynter’s White Sword/almost Master of Whisperers, Lord Valik (creates distrust between Wynter and Storm) = Lord Varys, created distrust between King Aerys and son Rhaegar
° Lady Ros = whore Ros, a character exclusive to the tv show
° Ancient hero’s magical sword Blazing = Azor Ahai’s legendary sword Lightbringer, or even Dawn (Storm is her ancestor’s worthy heir, and Azor Ahai is said to be reborn as well)
° Riverfall = Riverrun
° Blackwood = Blackwood
Really, one of the only things missing so far seems to be the Wall (although, mountains in general?), but rest assured, what lies behind it is still present in this story. And since you’ve waited long enough, let’s, shall we?
If Wynter loses control over the powers the Ice Heart gives him, if his heart turns into ice, his body gets taken over by Rorjak, the Ice King, who is God-like (The Great Other).
Rorjak has the power to make the dead rise again (Others), has minions like 15-20 feet tall Frost Giants, and his army exists of white wolf like monsters with red eyes called garm, animated dead humans, wolves, bears… Now, what are the aSoIaF Others going to have in their armies? Yup, giants, direwolves, animated dead humans, wolves, bears,…
A quote that reminds me even more of aSoIaF:
“Oh, Valik, tell the queen about the time you wrestled that boar to its knees,” or “My king, tell her about the time you found the ice dragon’s nest.
Lyanna’s intended Storm Lord was eventually taken down by a boar (though he got the boar as well), and the ice dragon is a constellation in the Northern sky, and also a children’s tale about an ice dragon and its rider that might or might not have existed for real in the world of aSoIaF.
~*~
Now, apart from the comparisons that can be drawn between this book and a certain other series, what is this story like?
Long, very looooooooong. Too long, in fact.
For those of you who occasionally read other people’s reviews, you might have at one time come across people saying they had to forgive the author for having the couple fight (the cliché stupid misunderstanding that doesn’t get resolved because they didn’t talk it out) and then there’s the anticipated break-up, and the getting back together and everything was fine after that, since it also was the end of the book. Well, this book features that as well, or rather as well as two married people can do that. Continuously.
Remember when I said that Wynter wanted to have an heir to love as fast as possible, since his days were numbered? Well, it means that he never planned to love his wife (I guess she’d be considered treacherous by default since she’s from a conquered land). In fact, if said wife wasn’t able to produce said heir – for him to love so he could melt the Ice Heart – within a year, he’d just get rid of her and marry one of the three remaining daughters of King Verdan. Problem is, Khamsin’s handmaiden supposedly overheard that talk and told her. Guess who’s not doing to declare her love for her husband within oh, let’s say the first 500 pages after they get married?
Wynter has been severely burned once before (Elka), and he’s determined not to have that happen again by letting Khasmin get too close to him (getting hurt again might make him less human and that means less time for that heir). Even though they’re pretty hot for each other in bed, as in all night long, once he’s out of there he turns cold again, but with the occasional hot mixed in, so Khamsin doesn’t know who the real Wynter is, either.
Both seem to have good reasons for not declaring their feelings for one another, but since the book is nearly 600 pages long, too much is just too much. So repetitive and therefore boring. A person can only read x amount of times how a guy uses every excuse he can find to turn away from his girl. Ugh. Should have cut that down.
Speaking of the hot sex scenes, though:
“This time you finish it.”
“How?” She was willing. The ache was there and building. She wanted more than his finger inside her. Her hand clenched tighter around his shaft, moving up and down in a rhythm that instinctively matched his own strokes.
“Mount me. As you would a horse.”
“I don’t know how. I’ve never ridden a horse.”
It just reminded me of some Rhaegar and Lyanna art, I cannot help it. Bummer is I probably cannot link it here. ;-)
For those who would perhaps look: it’s the third one. Poor Rhaegar. :-P
There’s a couple of weird things going on in this book.
- One of my issues is that the king, who’d want his queen pregnant and then unharmed for the duration of said pregnancy, right, agrees to let her take horseback riding lessons. Now, what’s that thing you need to stop immediately when you’re pregnant? Yup, horseback riding.
- After a few lessons, she can ride for hours on end. Ever jumped off a horse when you’d been sitting on it for hours? Add to that the cold weather of the Northern land. Feel like ice skating right after that? Don’t think so either.
- At a certain point in the story, Khamsin needs to summon lightning into her body to make it grow extra warm so she can channel that into a nearly-consumed Wynter whose body is frozen:
She raised her arms. Warmth became heat. Heat became fire. Fire became a wild, consuming blaze that rushed through every cell of her body. The air around her went violet, glowing with energy. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and loosed the bonds holding the lightning in check.
The sky went brilliant white. A lightning bolt, thick as the trunk of a tree, shot from the sky, racing down the tendrils of plasma she’d sent up into the clouds.
Her body shuddered, arching towards the sky as the bolt speared and seared her. For one instant, her entire being seemed to dissolve and scatter to the winds. Mind, flesh, thought, breath, blood, all flew apart in a split second, only to draw back into a cohesive whole the next. She rode the heat, the pain, the wildness as the lightning’s energy raced through her body, seeking an outlet. She would not give it that. Heat consumed her, hotter than the sun. She screamed in agony but held fast.
Sounds healthy, right? A page or two further they mention to her she’s pregnant.
I’m going to stop with my review here, as the ending is kind of already hinted at all over the place, and therefore a rehash isn’t necessary (nor do I feel like adding more).
So, after all this, what kind of rating will I give this book? I postponed it until I was ready with my review, but I think I’ll go with 2 stars for the following reasons:
I do think the general writing style is better than 2 stars (perhaps a 3 or 3.5 star), but taking into account that I not only got frustrated with the, to me, obvious comparisons to a book series I’ve been reading continuously for a year or 2 now, but also the really odd mistakes of letting a queen ride horses while pregnant with the heirs and the too fantasy I-can-get-repeatedly-hit-by-lightning-and-not-lose-my-babies, and the too silly hot/cold romance story because it needs to get dragged out till the ending which is hundreds of pages later, I think 2 should be reasonable.
melissalivanos's review against another edition
adventurous
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? No
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
ladylorn's review against another edition
4.0
It was alright. More romance-book-like than fantasy as most of the plot elements didnt exactly make sense. I feel the author had some weird pacing issues and you just started to get a feel for the characters as people in their own right (outside of romantic tropes) in the last 75 pages.
demoiselle_aux_yeux_verts's review against another edition
I felt like this book was too long and I didn’t find the MMC very likable.
isabellacreads's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25