REVIEW: The Winter King by C. L. Wilson
C ReviewsFantasy Romance7 Comments
Dear C. L. Wilson:
When I first starting reading the Lord of the Fading Land series in 2007, it was one of my first realizations that romance and epic high fantasy could be blended together. While the series presented the fated mate concept as part of the root of the worldbuilding, it was treated in very interesting ways. The fated mate bond could be used to keep bonded pairs alive and tormented or it could lead to the death when the bonded pair was separated. The series made me take a deeper look at a well worn trope and thereby elevated the series above its sisters in the subgenre.
When The Winter King was announced, I trembled with excitement. All of this is to say that perhaps my expectations were simply too high. The Winter King is a readable fantasy romance but at moments it was unbearably twee and took too many safe paths to arrive at the rather lackluster conclusion.
The naming convention in this fantasy series is indicative of the worldbuilding–it’s serviceable but not very original. Wynter Atrialan of Wintercraig is the kin of the Northern kingdom. His brother is named Garrick. Where’s the “winter” in Garrick?
On the flip side is the Summerlea king, Verdan. The Summerlea princesses are named “Summer” “Autumn” and “Spring” and then there’s the one sister, hidden away. She’s named “Storm” because of her uneven control over weather like elements but her real name is Khamsin and that is what she is called despite everyone else being called by their nicknames. I.e., why isn’t she called Storm other than the most obvious reason to show how different she is and what an outcast she is.
The theme of Winter King is sweet…only an act of true love with thaw a frozen heart…which is a great concept but it’s repeated continuously throughout the book. We know how the book has to end then and it does end in a predictable fashion.
The suspense of the story is that Wynter made a bargain with an evil spirit to gain power to avenge himself against the Summerleas. Prince Falcon killed Wyn’s brother and stole Wyn’s wife away. The Ice Heart that imbues Wynter with power is overtaking him and without a thaw, he will die. He demands one of the Summerlea princess’s hand in marriage with the intent of begetting a child with her.
King Verdan will not spare one of his “seasons” but he hates his fourth daughter and willingly sacrifices her. Of course, he does not tell Wynter because Verdan hates his daughter and therefore believes wrongly that Wynter will hate her as well.
The nice thing is that Khamsin’s sisters don’t hate her and try to arrange things so that her marriage to Wynter is somewhat pleasant. But Khamsin is not well received by the Wintercraig soldiers or their people.
Parts of the book felt dated to me such as the trickery, use of aphrodisiacs, Khamsin as the outcast. While it was a pleasant read, I never felt like anyone was in jeopardy or that I should be worried about the outcome. Now, I know it’s a romance so the outcome is always going to be a happy one, but I didn’t once think to myself ‘how will they get out of this?’ The final battle scene is over the top with nearly everything imaginable thrown at the wall.
The writing is good, the characterizations are believable. I appreciated the thoughtfulness in the worldbuilding even if some of it felt common to me. I wanted to like this book and as I closed the novel I wondered if my discontent really sprung from missed expectations more than anything which is a reader problem; not a book problem. My grade is reflective of my own interaction with the book and I’m giving it a C.
Best regards,
Jane
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I loved the Lord of the Fading Land series, until I couldn’t keep the titles straight or remember what I’d read. The description of every subsequent book sounded exactly like the previous and I became hopelessly lost. Perhaps I need to start at the beginning. Am I correct that THE WINTER KING is not part of the same world?
Darlynne, you are correct. Winter King is a completely new world.
Now, the question everyone’s thinking…
Was this published before or after Frozen? XD
I absolutely loved the fading land series and I actually have the physical copies on my shelf…I have under 20 books in my house, the rest are e-format. This book took FOREVER to be released and my expectations for the book were incredibly high. When it finally did come out, I was so excited and figured I’d be done the book in 2 nights but it took me almost 2 weeks to slog through it. I had to force myself to finish the book and I found it painful to read at times.
I think you hit nail on the head when you stated that the book felt dated. The names were ridiculous, there were massive info dumps throughout the book, the fantasy felt incredibly light (although I expect that to ramp up in the next book), many of the characters were one dimensional, and the repetition of phrases and stories -OMG! Every other sentence was giving a story or explanation TELLING me why the character was doing this or that instead of SHOWING ME.
This is supposed to be epic romantic fantasy but I had no sense of that. Everything felt light, even when bad things were happening I felt disconnected with no sense of danger. Epic doesn’t mean large word count.
It almost felt like this was the first story the author wrote and that she came back to it after she finished the fading lands.
Anyways, had it been any other author that wrote this I would have DNF’d it I think but because it was Wilson, I pushed through thinking it just had to get better. It stayed the same throughout, meandering around with no intensity.
My final grade was a D-
*Meant to say that “EPIC” means more then just a long word count.
On top of everything mentioned above, another thing that was missing more me, was alternating POV. Winter King stays with the H/h. For me at least, I would have liked to have the POV of Khasmin’s brother, the priestess, the approaching enemy army, maybe a guard or towns person. This way instead of telling me that character xyz did this or felt this, I could have been shown the scene from the other character’s POV and seen for myself. Wilson utilized this in Fading Lands which helped flesh out other characters, world building, cultures, religions. Also in Fading lands the romance and fantasy story arc were given equal time and woven together in a cohesive manner, whereas Winter King felt like an old skool 70s/80s romance and then the author went back and tack on the fantasy after – which is to say very disjointed & disconnected.
(There were flaws of course in Fading Lands but the series as a whole was well done and engaging, it was/is my epic fantasy crack!).
*Sigh* I so wish we had the ability to go back and edit spelling & grammar :/
I listened to this on audio (I have the print book as well – I, too, pre-ordered it aaaages ago). I ended up liking it quite a bit even though I knew I was being manipulated by the plot and some aspects of the story didn’t work that well for me. I liked the Tairen Souls series better but this was kind of fun for me. I had high expectations but when I saw reviews which were all over the place – ranging from DNF to A’s I adjusted my own so I think that helped too.