Daughter of Redwinter

dnf

the book started out strong but as we followed Raine through her journey it became clear that she had no motivations. the story fizzled out.
there was a point where Raine had a motivation, but when she is denied what she wants, instead of fighting for it she accept it. the characters were not well rounded or deep enough for me to follow them through a story that had hardly anything happening.
i do get the impression that the end of the book would, however, deliver strong but I couldn't bring up the urge to pick this book back up to read about someone I cared nothing about. there were strange things happening in the world, and yet, no one really seemed to care to do much about it.

Ovius. I have to mention him. he comes across as the nice guy, who pines after a character who doesn't share his feelings, but the trouble is, he isn't taking the hint and lies to others saying they are together and stalking the woman practically.
there was also a instance with Raine, a 17 yr in a relationship with a 30yr. this was grooming and the author took care to make that clear.

these moments could have been explored a lot more in depth, to show Raine dealing with these situations, instead most people accept Ovtius as he is, without curbing that side of him, or letting him know that it's wrong to stalk someone who doesn't share his feelings.

this story could have delivered a lot but it failed by being boring. the MC can see the dead yet that hardly gets a mention. things are happening around Raine, but she does little to nothing about it, or her situation. there was no drive to her, and that is why I couldn't finish this book.

The Raven's Mark series is one of my all time favorites. I was so excited to see a new series by Ed McDonald. He is definitely an auto-buy author for me.

Raine is cursed. She can see the dead. She must tell no one or she will be killed for it. So she just goes meekly along, doing what she's told.
Now her home is under siege. She must find a way out to save everyone. She needs to be brave.

She goes out to look for a way to safety, and instead finds a girl running for her life. Saving her might come to be the worst decision she's ever made.

This book is fantastic! I loved following Raine's journey to find out who she wants to be. I actually loved all of the characters. I questioned all of their loyalty and motives at one point or another and didn't know who to trust until the end.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for an e-arc.

I was pretty excited to read this because of McDonald's fanbase with his Blackwing series. I expected great prose with an imaginative world and I definitely got the unique world building. I've never read a book like this at all and for that I'll be reading the next book in the series, but the prose was a bit choppy. He really loves to make sentences short with periods instead of commas. The story was also extremely slow which is not what I expected with a book so short but it turned out to be okay. The ending fight scene was also pretty mediocre. The main character wasn't that great but she was decent. Some of the side characters were all right. The bad guys weren't all that hateable (probably because the was so short). I heard that this book was written before he wrote Blackwing so maybe that's why this isn't to par with my expectations. All of that being said I didn't love it but I liked it and will still continue with the series and definitely will read his previous series soon.