Winterkeep - Wyrms.de

544 pages

English language

Published Jan. 27, 2021 by Orion Publishing Group, Limited.

(1 review)

The highly anticipated next book in the New York Times bestselling, award-winning Graceling Realm series, which has sold 1.3 million copies.

Four years after Bitterblue left off, a new land has been discovered to the east: Torla; and the closest nation to Monsea is Winterkeep. Winterkeep is a land of miracles, a democratic republic run by people who like each other, where people speak to telepathic sea creatures, adopt telepathic foxes as pets, and fly across the sky in ships attached to balloons.

But when Bitterblue’s envoys to Winterkeep drown under suspicious circumstances, she and Giddon and her half sister, Hava, set off to discover the truth–putting both Bitterblue’s life and Giddon’s heart to the test when Bitterbue is kidnapped. Giddon believes she has drowned, leaving him and Hava to solve the mystery of what’s wrong in Winterkeep.

Lovisa Cavenda is the teenage daughter of a powerful Scholar and Industrialist …

The highly anticipated next book in the New York Times bestselling, award-winning Graceling Realm series, which has sold 1.3 million copies.

Four years after Bitterblue left off, a new land has been discovered to the east: Torla; and the closest nation to Monsea is Winterkeep. Winterkeep is a land of miracles, a democratic republic run by people who like each other, where people speak to telepathic sea creatures, adopt telepathic foxes as pets, and fly across the sky in ships attached to balloons.

But when Bitterblue’s envoys to Winterkeep drown under suspicious circumstances, she and Giddon and her half sister, Hava, set off to discover the truth–putting both Bitterblue’s life and Giddon’s heart to the test when Bitterbue is kidnapped. Giddon believes she has drowned, leaving him and Hava to solve the mystery of what’s wrong in Winterkeep.

Lovisa Cavenda is the teenage daughter of a powerful Scholar and Industrialist (the opposing governing parties) with a fire inside her that is always hungry, always just nearly about to make something happen. She is the key to everything, but only if she can figure out what’s going on before anyone else, and only if she’s willing to transcend the person she’s been all her life.

1 edition

Tsundoku reviewed Winterkeep by Kristin Cashore

Solving all the mysteries: like how "Balls" refers to Scrotums.

4 stars

Content warning Animal harm; confinement; only spoilers for the romance

Was I just obtuse for not figuring out the "Balls" thing?

Anyway, this is a solid but long book, I believe it's longer than Bitterblue. You should probably read it slower than I did, because there are some parts I didn't grasp the best because I was rushing.

This is markedly different than the previous 3. More sexual content, a bit more sexually explicit. It is not You-Know-Who-Adjacent this time.

There's several point of view characters, including Giddon (which made me excited. I like Giddon), Bitterblue, Lovisa, and others. Honestly if it wasn't for the Lovisa parts I'm not sure you could call this book YA. I'm not entirely sure you can anyway, since the only parts that have a young voice take up maybe a fourth or fifth of the book.

It's a GREAT read, but if you are expecting something along the lines of the previous books, don't.

I'll be clear, I really don't like when there's a significant age-gap in couples, but that's usually more "oh they got together when she was 17" or something. Giddon and Bitterblue sort of works in my opinion because they start as best-friends in Bitterblue, and don't really grow into anything until Bitterblue is 20-something. It did not make me as uncomfortable as I thought it would when I first detected hints of it in this book. But you know, your mileage may vary.