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Winterbirth

by Brian Ruckley

Reviewed by Coral


The gods created five races, to replace an earlier race lost to the world: humans, woodwights, a wolfen race, shapeshifters and the Anain, a mysterious and reclusive race. But when the humans and woodwights join forces to kill the wolves, the gods retreat from the world, leaving division and chaos in their wake.

With the rise of powerful human-woodwight hybrids, the humans and woodwights warred with each other, destroying the great woodwight city. Now their enmity is joined with divisions in their own races.

Split into tribes, the woodwights constantly raid and war against each other.

The humans are fractured into those who are led by kings and those who follow-up the Viking-esque Blood system. The Bloods themselves are divided into those who follow the Black Road religion, believing the gods will return when all are brought to their creed, and those who believe the gods are gone for good. Even inside these two factions, the different regions vie against rivals.

So when a minor Black Road house moves against some out of favour non-religious Blood houses, allying themselves with the woodwights in an unprecedented move, the whole region is threatened with a complex war where no one is sure they really want to win.

This book seemed a lot more complex then it needed to be, starting off from the Preface and two (!) prologues the book had. The first time I tried to read it I actually quit, but I wasn’t ready to give up on it completely, so I put it in the middle of my pile to try again.

Maybe they will play an important part in later books, but none of the races other than the humans and the woodwights had any impact on the story whatsoever.

I also thought there were some main logic flaws in the book.

When the Black Road launches its surprise attack, why do all of their resources go into a minor castle? Okay, the man in charge of the castle is the brother of the Thane (the leader of the house/region), but they just left the Thane’s castle and another main stronghold alone. They even had to siege them later, complaining about how hard these castles were to take. So why didn’t they use their stealth attacks for the main castles and siege the minor ones later?

Then we have the relationship between the Black Road and the White Owls, the woodwight tribe they have allied themselves with. Once the capture the minor castle, they renege on all of their promises and send them away, even though they wouldn’t have won without them. They welcome them back for a bit to stop a counter attack but send them away again. I don’t understand any of it. Why turn your allies into potential enemies? If you have so few soldiers with you, why send away a massive army before you defeat your enemies?

The internal strife in the non-religious Blood group made more sense to me than that from the religious group. If the Black Road really believes that by brining everyone to their faith the world will be reborn as the gods return, they why should the High Thane do nothing and let victory turn to defeat by not sending reinforcements?

What are the point of maps and character glossaries if they don’t include all of the places or people in the story?

I probably won’t buy the rest of the series. I understand the desire for politically complex stories, where plots move within plots, but I think you still need to be able to understand the decisions that characters make and so many of them were incomprehensible.

Grade: D (because I think there is still the kernel of a promising story in there, somewhere)