Winterkill (The Winterkill Trilogy)

by Kate A. Boorman

[jnikkir]

This review can also be found at my blog, There were books involved...

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I've decided to conduct a little experiment. I just finished reading Winterkill a few minutes ago, and usually I wait a day or so to start writing my reviews, and I end up writing them in two sittings. Well, I'm gonna see if I can write a full review immediately after finishing this book. I feel like this is a good book to start with, too, because I have a lot of THOUGHTS that are fresh in my mind. Unfortunately, most of these thoughts are not excellent. -_- So let's do this.

First off, Winterkill wasn't all bad. It did manage to grab my attention in the beginning, otherwise I would've DNF'd. The writing was good - the book is narrated by the main character, Emmeline (Em), and she speaks with a slight Western-inspired slang (not like, "talkin' and walkin'", but like, "unnatural quiet"). I found her narration to be easy to jump into, and the world pretty intriguing.

Em lives in a settlement basically in the middle of nowhere. There's no technology, nor mention of it - so think like, early American settlers, kind of thing. The community is surrounded by a high wall and the rules are incredibly strict. Like, capital punishment just for wandering too far from the settlement. ...Okay, I thought, this is crazy but I want to know what's going on. Em has what appears to be a very active imagination, tending to daydream a lot and imagine things when she's in the woods gathering things for the town healer. She's convinced there are other people out there, the Lost People, whom she wants to find, and who seem to whisper to her through the trees. Em is a very isolated character, though, because her family is "stained" by the wrongdoing of her grandmother, and pretty much everyone in the settlement looks on her with disdain. So she sort of keeps to herself, deciding to wander farther and farther from the settlement in search of these Lost People.

This sets things up pretty well... But guys, this. book. drags. I read 50% in one evening, which was fine, I just sort of powered through it hoping it would pick up and sort of enjoying the dreamy quality of Em's narration and curious where things would go. But from that point on, it took me twice as long to get through -- it felt like we were getting nowhere and I had very little inclination to keep going. A couple things happened here and there, but what really got me -- the most boring part of this book -- were the characters. Em, her friend Tom, the handsome Kane, and Stockham, the town leader.

These characters... how do I explain this...? So, okay, you know when you meet a character for the first time, and you get an impression of them, and then as the book continues, that impression changes and grows and (hopefully) forms into a complete picture by the end? Well, for me, not a single character had changed at all by the end of the book. They were -- and still are -- the same as my first impressions of them in the very beginning.

Q: What does this do to a book, when characters are so... static? Boring? A: It kills it. Totally smashes my interest in it. Em was just not an engaging character. She seemed to stay at the same emotional level throughout the whole book, even when she was in perilous situations. Or when she did get emotional, or was put in danger, her tone was still just... boring. The characters themselves all seemed to be one-trick ponies. Em was sort of dreamy and curious about stuff, but still pretty demure (where was that "quick tongue" mentioned in the blurb?! I didn't see it even once); Tom, her friend, is pretty straight-laced and skeptical; Kane is interested in Em... for some reason... and that's pretty much it. And Stockham is creepy and also interested in Em. For some reason. Though some characters' actions were a little surprising in the end, they never really showed a true depth, nor did they have well-explained reasons driving their actions.

This leads me to another issue I had with this book... the fact that two guys (yet again...) were both interested in Em. Okay, I can deal with triangles. But in this case, neither one had any history with her, or real reasons why they loved her sooooooooooo much. O_o Kane and Stockham spend hardly any time with Em through the course of the book, and yet they're both totally head over heels for her pretty much the second she "comes of age" or whatever, and is officially old enough to get married (or "bound" as her settlement calls it). Even if the two of them pooled their Em-time, it STILL would not have been enough time to base a relationship on. It was mind-boggling.

Finally, I was hoping that the end of this book would pull out some twists and excitement, wrap things up nicely, and I'd be left feeling like maybe this wasn't a total waste of time... But unfortunately, that was not the case. Stuff definitely happened, but it felt like fireworks being set off in no particular pattern or without any forethought. Exciting and loud and bright, but sort of just... all over the place and confusing.

 
In conclusion...

This was not my thing. The characters were boring and the story seriously dragged. Additionally, I was expecting two other things that were not delivered: worldbuilding that made some semblance of sense, and... you know... snow.

Regarding the worldbuilding - it's incredibly sparse. Basically you just have to take the settlement and its crazy rules at face value (there are some explanations but I found the a bit unbelievable), and don't expect answers about the outside world. There aren't any. There are vague hints, but absolutely no answers.

Regarding the lack of snow -- that was a surprise! Look at that cover! I expected them to be fighting blizzards; and with a title like Winterkill... I mean... really? But no. We get a bit of a cool breeze in the first 95% of the book, and then two vague pages of this legendary, terrible winter, and then it's spring again. What?! -_-

Yeah. I really didn't love this one. And in fact, I had no idea until just now when I looked at the author's website, but this is apparently the first in a trilogy. Suffice it to say, I will not be picking up the next book. This was just not for me.

Plus side: Apparently this book was good for something - I finished a review in one sitting! In an hour! This is a miracle for me. So... thanks, Winterkill?

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There were books involved...