A review by ajparmentier
Winterkeep by Kristin Cashore

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved this book so much! I read it all in one go. Cashore has done it again. The beginning like 30 pages or so were a little more inelegantly a worldbuilding dump than usual, but afterwards the worldbuilding was a lot more organic as Cashore built up this whole new world. All of the POV characters were so interesting and dynamic. Cashore further explores themes of power, love, sex, abuse, and recovery. It's such a pleasure to see these themes deepened and different aspects of them examined in each of the books.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Murder

Moderate: Death, Sexual content, Violence, and Death of parent

Minor: Animal cruelty and Animal death

Sexual assault:

Very scene where a boy threatens to have sex with a girl against her will. She just doesn't want to have sex in that location and basically argues with the boy and the move locations. The boy doesn't appear much later in the story.

Suicide:

Mentions of suicide and allusions to a character considering suicide and not caring about their life are made. No suicides occur.

Abuse via starvation and neglect. Animal cruelty:

None of the named/significant animals die or intentionally cruelly injured. It's "faceless" ocean animals. One of the main animal characters gets injured and another is in a (mostly emotionally) abusive situation. But doesn't get, like, hit or anything.