The Winner's Curse (Winner's Trilogy, #1)

by Marie Rutkoski

As a general's daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. Kestrel has other ideas.

One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in Arin, a young slave up for auction. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him - and for a sensational price that sets the society gossips talking. It's not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin. But he, too, has a secret and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for him is much higher than she ever could have imagined.

The first novel in a stunning new trilogy, The Winner's Curse is a story of romance, rumours and rebellion, where dirty secrets and careless alliances can be deadly - and everything is at stake.

• ISBN10: 0374384673
• ISBN13: 9780374384678
• Publish Date: 4 March 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 20 March 2025
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[alindstadtcorbeax]

Star Rating: —> 4-4.5 Stars

I am SO VERY MUCH enjoying reading all of these '10s YA fantasy series that I missed out on when I first got sick.

This was fantastic! Such great characters, world building, and storyline; it was both complex, and yet wonderfully readable. I LOVED the midnight lie, and not knowing it was in the same universe as the winners curse trilogy, I added them to my tbr. Why didn't I read this sooner?! So AMAZING!

There were a few things I didn't LOVE, but nothing major.


100% Recommend!!

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

I'm not exactly sure what I think about this book? It's a weird feeling. It's... forgettable, I guess. It was an entertaining enough read, butI don't feel any emotional connection to the characters and the romance was hella cheesy. There were moments where I thought that Kestrel was going to have some real depth or purpose - Arin too, I suppose - but then they just kept turning back to this fated love story? That's such a pet peeve for me... when all pretense of a great political action drama is put on the back burner for a cringy romance? *sigh*

At the same time... I dunno, I guess I felt compelled to keep reading? I listened to 85% of this in one sitting and it was such a breath of fresh air at the time. Not because of itself, I suppose, but because it was *not* the other book I was listening to? I'm not sure if this comparison gave it more love than it deserved from me, or if I transferred some of my impatience on to it.

As for being shelved as fantasy... ... no? There's no fantastical elements for me here, nor dystopian ones. It's an alternate world with a Romanesque vibe. I'd call it historical fiction if it wasn't a made up place, which I suppose is what makes it fantasy... but it didn't feel like fantasy to me. The world itself was good, the political elements were interesting. So were the customs and social classes. These were all presented as background, though. The book would have been stronger with the romance as a subplot and everything else front-and-center.

I'll be reading the next book - I'm intrigued, if not attached. I think The Winner's Curse is worth reading, but it's not something I'll be adding to my personal collection.

[jeannamichel]

I'm giving this one a 4.5. Despite being slow in the beginning, it was excellent story building, gorgeous characters and absolute magnificent story telling. Review to come.

[Rinn]

Also reviewed on my blog, Rinn Reads.

The Winner’s Curse is a tricky book to define – I honestly have no idea what genre to put it under. The setting doesn’t quite feel fantasy, but it also doesn’t quite feel science fiction. I suppose it could considered to be a dystopian novel, but in a very different way to other Young Adult dystopian such as The Hunger Games or Divergent. I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I picked it up – there are a lot of positive reviews on Goodreads – but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

The setting seemed a little odd. There was obvious Graeco-Roman inspiration, e.g. the empire, slaves, villas, names such as Trajan and soldiers with names ending in ‘x’, but there were plenty of names that didn’t fit. I suppose it doesn’t have to be inspired by one particular culture, if any at all, but it does make it feel more grounded and ‘real’, in a way. The world-building didn’t feel very strong. There was a vague sense of history – the Valorians enslaved the Herranis a while before the events of the book, but that was about it.

Kestrel, the protagonist, was a relief. She may have been from an aristocratic family, but she wasn’t amazing at everything, despite all the opportunities. She was clever, quick-witted and musical, but not a good fighter. She doesn’t mope about, there’s no talk of how she’s plain or any ‘special snowflake’ behaviour. And she has a genuine friendship with a female friend that doesn’t just revolve around the friend being a handy way for Kestrel to discuss her feelings – although it does seem that way at first, it is later shown that Jess is truly important to Kestrel. However, Arin felt quite flat. There was a little bit of his history, but I wasn’t able to get a real sense of his personality. It’s a possibility that he was meant to be mysterious and aloof, but it didn’t really come off that way.

I am writing this review a few weeks after reading the book, and I have to admit that if it weren’t for my notes, I’d have great difficulty writing this. Despite having read the book not that long ago, it took me a little while to recall all of the details. It may not be the most memorable of stories, but I do know that I really enjoyed it! And the best bit? No insta-love!

[liz089]

I already read this book last year.. but never continued. Now I've got the whole series on my shelve at home and I want to continue. But when you read so many books, some of the details get away from me, so I wanted to make a good start with finishing this series, so I re-read this book.
Loved it just as much as the first time, great plot with awesome characters, will start on the next one soon !

[readingwithwrin]

“Survival isn't wrong. You can sell your honor in small ways, so long as you guard yourself. you can pour a glass of wine like it's meant to be poured, and watch a man drink, and plot your revenge.”

See reviews first on my blog

This book is my favorite fantasy book I've read so far this year!

The first hundred or so pages of this book are a little slow due to us having to get immersed into the world and starting to understand how certain things work. But after those first one hundred I couldn't put the book down. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Kestrel was she finally going to give in and do what her father wanted her to? Or was she going to keep doing her own thing with the little amount of time she had left?

Plus we also have the biggest new issue in Kestrel's life.. The slave Arin she purchased at the market that she has no idea what do with. When she finally starts getting comfortable having a slave though she makes sure that he is well taken care of and even has him be her escort as much as possible.
“She reminded herself bitterly that this was what curiosity had bought her: fifty keystones for a singer who refused to sing, a friend who wasn't her friend, some one who was hers and yet would never be hers.”

Arin is such a complicated character, he wasn't always a slave and because of that at times he really struggles with making sure he doesn't let his previous life start to show. He wants to help his people, but to do that he's going to have to make some tough decisions that will break his heart sadly.

The friendship Arin and Kestrel end up having while unlikely was nice to see. While they both have secrets that they keep from each other, the make an okay team.

"Maybe it's not as easy for me as it is for you."
He wheeled on her. "It's not easy for me," "You know that it's not. What do you think I have had to swallow these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?"
"Truly," she said, "I haven't the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else."
He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: "You can make people feel so small.”

I really loved this book! The tension between Kestrel in Arin was perfect and there wasn't any insta anything in a ya book for a change! The political side of Kestrel and Arin's lives I found fascinating as well as the historical elements that were added in. Plus we also have a wide variety of side characters from both Kestrel and Arin that while being extremely different was never confusing. This is a very plot driven book, and I think Rutkoski did an amazing job with it.

“Isn't that what stories do, make real things fake, and fake things real?”
I now get why this book was so hyped up and I can't wait to read the next two books in the series and see what happens next to Kestrel and Arin!

[Cocktails and Books]

I've heard about this series for a while but was just now able to pick it up. I wish I would have done so sooner. Well written with some great headstrong characters. I can't wait to see what Kestrel and Arin do next.

[Vicki]

Mar 2018 = 4 stars
Apr 2016 = 5 stars

[Stephanie]

I was on board until the ending, which felt like pulled taffy -- super rushed, then super slow, and then too many quickly brushed over things. But I'm interested in the next one, Rutkoski. You got me.

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

4.75 ★ Audiobook⎮April has been a very productive month for my audiobook bucket list, if not for much else. This is an audiobook I have had in my sights for more than a year now. I have seen nothing but glowing reviews for it, which of course made me skeptical about starting it. I have a tendency to dislike overly hyped books and this particular one already had a huge mark against it because I'm not a fan of the narrator. In fact, she was the sole reason I kept putting off this audiobook. However, after months of being bombarded with reviews praising this series, curiosity finally got the best of me. I told myself that I would give the audiobook two hours, just to see if the story lived up to all the hype and if I could tolerate the narrator enough to enjoy the story.

Maybe it's because I already had low hopes going in, but this is one of those rare times when I actually wasn't disappointed by a really popular book. To be honest, the first 10 minutes were the worst part of the experience, not because of the story itself, but because I couldn't focus on anything but how much the narrator's voice made my skin crawl. After about the 10 minute mark, the story began to consume me and it was all I could think about from that point on. At 30% completion, I realized that the narration only bothered me when I actively thought about it, which wasn't that often anymore. At 45%, I knew I was hooked, for better or worse. Marie Rutkoski had me in her grips, god awful narration or not. The plot itself doesn't seem that extraordinary, but the writing makes it so. I'm not sure why, but I got a distinct Gone with the Wind impression from this story, albeit an alternative, militaristic impression. That's probably because slavery plays a major part in the plot, although US history this ain't. The story takes place in some sort of fantasy world with different races and nationalities, but honestly, that's all I was able to figure out. It was a little hard to orient myself within the world, as far as setting and timeframe, but that never really posed any problems to my understanding of the story. That's probably why my brain chose to relate it to my closest frame of reference, which was the pre-Civil War South, even though there seem to be significant differences in timeframe.

I liked the female protagonist, Kestrel, although I don't think I love her yet. But if she keeps going in the current direction, I can definitely see myself loving her in future installments. I would like to see her develop more of a backbone and the skills to adequately defend herself instead of needing to be rescued. My opinion of Arin, the male protagonist, keeps wavering as does my opinion of the political conflict. I suspect that the author intends for the reader to be torn in choosing a side, just as Kestrel is. I also suspect that the "right" choice will become increasingly evident throughout the series. The romance is engaging and emotionally provoking. And, thankfully, does not have a hint of a third wheel (no love triangle). All in all, I'm very satisfied with this story and do plan to continue with the series very soon.

Narration review: You probably already know how this is going to go, but here it is anyway. Everyone has their favorite narrator(s) and likewise probably has a narrator (or several) that they would prefer to not hear again. For me, Justine Eyre is the latter. It's nothing personal against her and I don't mean this as an attack in any way, but her voice is majorly offputting to me. Like, "nails on a chalkboard" offputting. This is only my personal opinion and I'm sure someone out there probably thinks I'm crazy for not loving her work. But her voice just gets under my skin. I first heard her narration in Fallen and, after struggling to finish it, I swore that I would never listen to her again. Fallen was not as strong of a story as The Winner's Curse and therefore I was probably more inclined to let the narration bother me than in this case. While my opinion of Eyre's narration style has not changed, my fascination with this series encourages me to persevere with the following installments. For those that are not as chained to the audiobook format as I am, I highly suggest picking this series up in regular book format. Or, at least listen to a sample of the audiobook before purchasing to see how you feel about the narration. ♣︎