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TinaNoir

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Genre fiction lover:  Romance, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Urban Fantasy

The Winter King

The Winter King - C.L. Wilson

I read this author's Tairen Soul series up through the third book.  While I enjoyed the first two books of the series, my enthusiasm waned during the third book.  I never completed the series because I found the pacing to be somewhat glacial and the villain to be rather uninspired.

Still I liked the writer's voice and was glad to see that she had written a new book completely separate from that other series.

The plot of the book is very familiar.  Two kingdoms, Summerlea and Wintercraig, are at war after a Prince of Summerlea breaks a peace, steals the Winter King's affianced bride and kills his heir.  Wynter, the Winter King, is super pissed and takes some oaths that imperil his soul all so he can defeat the Summerlanders.  This he does and part of the terms of their surrender is that he marry one of the daughters of the Summer King.  He is given the youngest daughter, Khamsin.  He swears to beget a heir on her, one that will sit on the Summer throne.  If she isn't with child by the end of one year, she will be killed and another daughter will take her place.  The two set out for Wintercraig full of distrust.  But of course they must overcome those feelings of distrust because it is only with their union that they can hope to defeat the biggest enemy of all.

I had the hardest time getting into this book.  The beginning of it was rather a slog.  It was full of exposition with nothing that really hooked me into the story.

After awhile I did begin to get interested in the plot because there were moments where I felt the story was beginning to gel.  However I can't say that I actually enjoyed the story.

This is a fantasy romance.  As a habitual reader of fantasy, I thought the fantasy aspects of it were ok but nothing really new.  The idea of  Khamsin's Summer Heat melting or thawing Wynter's Ice-Cold heart is a theme revisited over and over.  There is an enchanted heroic sword whose power can only be unleashed by the real heir to the sword.  There are Priestesses who guard prophecy and speak in enigmatic riddles.   There is a Big Bad that can only be defeated by the sword (or the power of true love take your pick).  

The romance aspects, however, come across as somewhat joyless.  Khamsin and Wynter's relationship start with a series of (rather tedious) deceptions.  And throughout the story one or the both of them are constantly accusing the other of mistrust and betrayal.  The periods of mistrust are broken up by periods where it seems they are beginning to feel something and open up to each other.  Only to have something else happen that plunges them back into their cycle of accusation again.  I simply could not relax and enjoy the two characters.  I wanted to watch them form a bond and a relationship, but I knew it wouldn't last.   I found myself skimming pages (this is a rather long book) to get to the inevitable.   To be fair, they were being betrayed left, right and center.  You really needed a score-card to keep up with all the betraying going on. And the bad guys are telegraphed so broadly, it dulled their impact a bit for me.

Even so, I was still rather engaged in the plot.  It says a lot about the author's ability to keep the story going that even though I had a ton of issues with the characters and some of their motivations, I didn't want to close the book before the end.

That was until I got to the big climactic scene in the end.  For me this is really where things began to fall apart. The characters were all over the place here.  Wynter was still blathering about betrayals, Khamsin suddenly morphs into a silver tongued diplomat and a 4-star battle general all in one afternoon, and the bad guys conveniently appear in places where they need to be, right when they absolutely need to be get their bad on.  

And finally the main villain, the Big Bad they have to fight falls into the same trap i thought the author's earlier series did.  The Ice King was just evil for evil's sake.  I had no idea what he wanted except to what… be Ice king and kill people?  But if you kill everybody what exactly are you king of?

The book had the bones to be an affecting fantasy romance.  I am sure my issues aside, there will be some who will really love it because there is a solid plot and some strong sexual chemistry between Kham and Wynter.  But I just didn't completely enjoy this one.

 

Review based on an ARC received via the Amazon Vine Program