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A review by rhysciar
The Winter Road by Adrian Selby
5.0
I'm having a hard time summarizing this book, and I don't know why. It was a really good book, I enjoyed it immensely.
So we got our main hero, Teyr. She is a merchant of some sort, a former soldier, who has a dream: to build a road in a clan-filled land. This road would help the clans greatly. Trading and travelling would be easier, and of course, it could give stability to the land.
But of course nothing is as easy as it seems. There is a warlord in the land, who is terrorizing everyone, and he doesn't want to do anything with this road. And perhaps there are some things that happen in the book which makes him really angry at Teyr.
Anyway, this is what an action packed novel is about. Something is always happening. There's fights, there's deaths - oh but how many... -, and there are twists you can't be prepared for. So I would say this book is not for the faint hearted.
Teyr is in fact a badass character. Her fighting is clever, she is strong, she is angry, but most importantly she is human. And for humans, she can fu*k up everything, and this I loved about this book. While the novel sticks to some tropes, but because of Teyr, you can never be sure of what will happen. You shouldn't as well.
The focus is on the 'magic system'. As far as I can say, magic is nothing but different brews, potions as anybody would say. You patch up some herbs, plants, you mix them up, and bam, you got different kinds of potions. You have fightbrews, which make you stronger, faster; you have healing brews; you have some stuff that makes you see better at night - this whole system reminded me of videogames, where you ease your fight with whatever you can.
Only Selby could have explained them better. I mean there's this mist hanging over the book, which makes the whole story feels like some old myth, and I guess it could have been his idea from the beginning, but it feels a little off.
Not that the world itself wouldn't be interesting. It's fascinating, it's fantastic! Though I do love the idea of clans and barbarians, so this world appealed to me. And there are the Oskoro, whom I have no idea who or what they are really - and because Selby doesn't really explain them to us, it's the better. I imagined them as humans who meddled with plants and magic for far too deep, and live as a symbiosis. I imagine they look like half plants and half humans?
And this is not the only question I have. This book surprisingly had some deep thoughts - like for instanse what should you do with your life; what is happiness; what does family means to you; what does death mean to you; how do you cope with death. Surprisingly, because who knew that a 'simple' fantasy novel could have these topics embedded within itself? It made me thinking for days, and I cannot emphasize how great an experience is that!
So this is a great book. I can't really say anything bad for it, becaused I loved it. I understand this is not a series, but Selby's other books, Snakewood and the upcoming Brother Red are taking place in the same universe, in the same land as this. So I have to move up these books in my TBR, because I have to know what will happen in these lands, and if they are half as good as this was, than I'm up for a treat!
So we got our main hero, Teyr. She is a merchant of some sort, a former soldier, who has a dream: to build a road in a clan-filled land. This road would help the clans greatly. Trading and travelling would be easier, and of course, it could give stability to the land.
But of course nothing is as easy as it seems. There is a warlord in the land, who is terrorizing everyone, and he doesn't want to do anything with this road. And perhaps there are some things that happen in the book which makes him really angry at Teyr.
Anyway, this is what an action packed novel is about. Something is always happening. There's fights, there's deaths - oh but how many... -, and there are twists you can't be prepared for. So I would say this book is not for the faint hearted.
Teyr is in fact a badass character. Her fighting is clever, she is strong, she is angry, but most importantly she is human. And for humans, she can fu*k up everything, and this I loved about this book. While the novel sticks to some tropes, but because of Teyr, you can never be sure of what will happen. You shouldn't as well.
The focus is on the 'magic system'. As far as I can say, magic is nothing but different brews, potions as anybody would say. You patch up some herbs, plants, you mix them up, and bam, you got different kinds of potions. You have fightbrews, which make you stronger, faster; you have healing brews; you have some stuff that makes you see better at night - this whole system reminded me of videogames, where you ease your fight with whatever you can.
Only Selby could have explained them better. I mean there's this mist hanging over the book, which makes the whole story feels like some old myth, and I guess it could have been his idea from the beginning, but it feels a little off.
Not that the world itself wouldn't be interesting. It's fascinating, it's fantastic! Though I do love the idea of clans and barbarians, so this world appealed to me. And there are the Oskoro, whom I have no idea who or what they are really - and because Selby doesn't really explain them to us, it's the better. I imagined them as humans who meddled with plants and magic for far too deep, and live as a symbiosis. I imagine they look like half plants and half humans?
And this is not the only question I have. This book surprisingly had some deep thoughts - like for instanse what should you do with your life; what is happiness; what does family means to you; what does death mean to you; how do you cope with death. Surprisingly, because who knew that a 'simple' fantasy novel could have these topics embedded within itself? It made me thinking for days, and I cannot emphasize how great an experience is that!
So this is a great book. I can't really say anything bad for it, becaused I loved it. I understand this is not a series, but Selby's other books, Snakewood and the upcoming Brother Red are taking place in the same universe, in the same land as this. So I have to move up these books in my TBR, because I have to know what will happen in these lands, and if they are half as good as this was, than I'm up for a treat!