Book Title: The Winter of the Witch
Author: Katherine Arden
Series: The Winternight Trilogy #3
Date Started: January 10th 2020
Date Completed: January 12th 2020
Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Adventure, Romance
Quality Rating: Five Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars
Final Rating: Five Stars
Review:
The Winternight has rooted itself as one of my all-time favourite trilogies with every single book. It's so beautifully written, so well balanced between bitter and sweet, between history and fairy tale, and so bloody empowering on all accounts. Sure, it's everything I've ever loved about stories in one, but whether you're already caught in the magic of the genre or not, these books will bewitch you.
Vasya as a heroine has been one of the most powerful forces I've ever read. She is so flawed, making mistakes and being powerless and terrified a lot, but these qualities are shown alongside her strength which is what ultimately highlights it. She knows how to come back to who she is, what she wants, what she thinks is right. Her relationship with the frost demon empowers her as an individual, rather than making her a vessel for some romance in the story. As a character, and as a protagonist, she is active, tenacious and so real.
The structure of this final book is like a fairy tale, and it took me a while to catch up to that. You think the battle is over and then realise you haven't learnt the lesson yet. You defeated the beast, but you haven't solved the story. That, I think, was pure genius and made me fall in love even more. The Winter of the Witch is so packed full of action; it starts off right where the last book left off and it doesn't let you breathe for a single second until the end.
More than anything, these books mean a lot to me because they tell my kind of story: they explore unity, acceptance of others and self-acceptance, self-betterment, wonder, justice, change. This book is an adventure that addresses all of these perfectly. Political without preaching politics because it is about morality, and really that's what politics is all about. And it does it in the most wondrous fairy tale weaved with history and fantasy alike.
