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bree_h_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This was a pretty solid read, which was a nice surprise considering I wasn’t sure what to expect from the book.
The characters felt really well rounded. The MC actually read as a teen thrown into a situation she didn’t know how to handle, but that did lead to moments that I was extremely frustrated with the MC because she came across as incredibly stupid. The rest of the cast I found considerably more enjoyable and she we had gotten more of. I also really liked the character dynamics, both posters and negative. Each character played off each other in a unique and interesting way that I really enjoyed.
The mystery of the book was also really solid. A lot of the conclusions the MC came to I also suspected and pieced together, even if getting there felt a bit rushed at times.
My only issue was the world building. There were a lot of details that felt conflicting with what had been established and what we were seeing on page. And a lot of what was established didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why was the MCs family so violent and prone to killing each other? What sense did that make? Why was the issue of following the MC was that people believed she killed her family when every leader before her had? I just didn’t feel like it was super consistent at times, despite how interesting most of it was.
Overall pretty solid sapphic fantasy read!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Murder, Toxic relationship, and Suicide
Moderate: Infidelity, Medical content, Body horror, Physical abuse, War, Classism, Child abuse, Alcohol, and Death of parent
Minor: Child death, Incest, Misogyny, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Sexism
booksthatburn's review against another edition
Content Warnings
Minor: Violence, Death, Toxic relationship, Murder, and Child death
angstifies's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
the premise and the setting were very interesting and the plot was good enough but i just didn’t connect with the story at all, i didn’t find any of the characters that likable and the main character made very dense decisions almost all the time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Murder
Moderate: Chronic illness and Violence
Minor: Suicide and Gaslighting
wet_towlette's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
This book has very strange pacing. It was super fast (in a bad way) in the beginning and then completely slowed down for the bulk of the book, and picked up near the end. I also don’t understand most of the characters motivations. Like the only person who makes sense in Aino. This book isn’t bad by any means and I did enjoy quite a bit of it. The plot was very interesting albeit the blurb was a bit misleading. I had fun with it, it’s just aggressively mediocre.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Blood, Vomit, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Murder, Suicide, and Violence
silversparkles50's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder
cjblates's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-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
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder
beautifulpaxielreads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Medical trauma, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, and Violence
vacantteeth's review
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I’m eternally grateful to this book for finally breaking me out of my month-long reading slump, who knew all I needed was a sapphic YA fantasy.
The Winter Duke follows our main character Ekaterina ‘Ekata’ Avenko as she is forced into the position of grand duke of her small Northern country after a curse leaves her entire family in a slumber, unable to be woken.
The book itself is very much a political fantasy and less of a magically centered fantasy and this is perhaps one of the things I enjoyed most about it, I tend to prefer my fantasy to be more politically-inclined.
To say I loved this book would be somewhat of an understatement, but also to say that I found this book without its faults would be a lie.
Let’s start with what I loved.
❆ the side characters were all amazingly well-written, even the antagonists of the story shone. Aino and Saljo were definitely two of my favorite side characters.
❆ the ROMANCE was so adorable, i loved how tentative Ekata and Inkar were around each other because of the frosty political climate but they slowly grew into friends and began to trust one another more. One of my favorite YA wlw romances I’ve read.
❆ Inkar was such a wonderful character, she was so many things wrapped into one and it really worked in her favor.
❆ I also truly loved the fact that Ekata made so many mistakes throughout the book because she never had a liking for politics or her family’s murderous games, she consistently made stupid decisions that had very real consequences
Now with what I didn’t like and what were some flaws.
❆ I would have liked Ekata’s family trauma to have been dealt with more but the book was on a time crunch, occurring within only seven days. Still, there were so many mentions of her siblings being murdered by each other and attempts made on her own life by her siblings and I wish that was explored more.
❆ I’m personally not a huge fan of first person POV but in some instances it’s absolutely right for the story being told, and while I think first person was perfect for this book I wish the writing was a little less… obvious in terms of Ekata’s thinking.
❆ Lastly, I hated the ending. While Ekata didn’t have much character growth throughout the story as it took place in only a week, she still had some and was on the rise to growing even more as a person and as grand duke of Kylma Below, and it feed to me like a lot of that growth and a lot of the plot development as well was erased in the last two chapters and the Epilogue of the book. This is largely my problem with YA novels of any genre, growth and plot development is usually erased or denounced in the end.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: murder, attempted murder, dry drowning, medical procedures (minor), death and injury (minor)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Death
offbrandclubsoda's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
I listened to this as an audiobook and it was pretty good. The book’s representation of queer folks and gender diverse characters was very well done. Good slow burn sapphic romance. The political elements were interesting, though the end of the book felt overly complicated in its wrap up of the plot. Overall, this was a decent young adult fantasy but not amazing
Spice level: 🌶/5
Spice level: 🌶/5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder and Vomit
Minor: Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Suicide, and Violence
roguebelle's review
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
This book was intriguing, with plenty of interesting fantasy worldbuilding elements to hold my attention, but it sort of fell apart at the end, particularly from a political perspective. Ekata really shouldn’t have woken up her family. They’re verifiably terrible people who did their best to wreck the country and will certainly go on trying to wreck it, parliament or no parliament. You can’t just slap a representative government on top of an autocracy and assume that sorts things out. Representative governments are much harder to build and sustain. Maybe if Reko had been more of a character, I’d have more faith in this ending? As it is, everything just feels wildly unresolved and unsatisfying. I also really don’t understand what happened with the Below politics; it got whooshed by so fast, like the author was in a hurry to wrap things up.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder and Violence
Minor: Gore
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