A review by vacantteeth
The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett

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)
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