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A review by thefussyreader
The Winter Road by Adrian Selby
4.0
3.75☆ ... I think?
This is difficult book to get into, but I would urge you to keep going, because it does get easier. Not to say that the writing style changes, you simply get used to it.
I read 27 pages before realising I didn't know what the fuck was going on. The next day I started again from the beginning, because I was determined to enjoy and understand this book. And I feel pretty confident I managed both of those things.
Characters
Like the writing style itself, the charcters are difficult to like at first.
The strange writing style made the them difficult to relate to, or even understand initially, but once the plot got going and I understood Teyr's motivations, she was a very likeable character in the end.
It was quite refreshing to see a female in the role of brutal, badass mercenary for a change, especially as she had a 'house husband' who was her opposite in that regard. A flipping of gender roles like this isn't something I see that often in fantasy, much less grimdark, so it made for a surprisingly unquie read for me.
And the female badassery doesn't stop with Teyr. Oh, no, she's no mere lip-service to feminism, there were multiple brutal female mercenaries in her group, which did wonders for the world-building, establishing an alternative look at gender normative within this world.
Teyr remained a nuanced character throughout and I think as a reader or a writer, that's all you can ask for.
Plot
A standalone fantasy novel. There's a collect of words you don't see often. It was quite refreshing to pick this up, knowing I wasn't about to get invested in a three, five, or ten books series. There's a certain feeling of freedom to that.
As for the plot itself, this is a revenge arc, and a satisfying one too, I might add.
Told in two parts, I found the jumping between Then and Now a little tricky to navigate at first, only because I kept forgetting whether I was in Then or Now. I'd have to keep flipping back to the chapter start and checking. A few chapters in though, I got into the swing of things and found it easy enough to follow.
It seems a strange style of storytelling. Half the book does the previously mentioned Then and Now thing. When the stroy fully catches up to Now, the narrative stays within the Now. Which is understandable. But then the story reaches its conclusion, and the remaining portion of the book is told through the format of letters back and forth between Teyr and Aude.
Though the letters were indeed interesting, and I glad they were included, but it felt a little odd. Like they were something g wholly separate to the story I'd just read. I felt like so much of Teyr and Aude's lives were brushed over, and I would've been equally as satisfied if the story ended when the main story arc wrapped itself up.
So in conclusion, I liked, but also why?
I will say though, that the pacing of this plot is fantastic. There's never a slow moment. Everything that happens pushes the plot forward.
Setting
I must admit, this book has some very intelligent world-building going on. There are zero info-dumps. No exposition. Nothing is explained. We're like babies thrown into the deep end. Our natural instinct is to simply float until someone saves us, but no one saves us in this book, we just continue to float through the world until we've been in the water long enough to suddenly realise we can swim.
The author creates his world through language. Not word choice, but language. As in made up words.
Again, this was a little tricky to navigate at first, but after you've been in the world a good long while, the strange slang starts sounding normal.
I even had a A Clockwork Orange moment when I first started, where I had to put the book down and consider whether I was actually going to understand any of it. But reading this book gave me similar moments of marvel. The brain it fantastic, how quickly it can recognise made-up words and give them meaning based purely on the context in which they're used. This book, if nothing else, makes a fine study on how easily language can be interpreted if one immerses themselves enough.
The world itself feels incredibly bleak and dangerous. It's the epitome of a grimdark novel, and I really appreciate how brutal the author got with his characters. Like, these guys suffered. I'm not just speaking about the deaths either, but the extend of character injures felt like a shock to my reader system. So often I expect characters to slip through battles unscathed, but this author went there, and he wasn't afraid to keep going there.
Writing Style
So as I brushed upon above, this writing style......it's a choice, that's for sure.
I don't think I could read endless books written this way, but finding a book like this every so often is, I feel, a genuinely beneficial read.
It shows me that even if the writing is a challenge and not what might he considered 'normal writing', my brain will adjust to this new idea of 'normal'.
Without getting too deep here, I just find the brain, and how it interprets language, to be fascinating.
That being said, this writing is definitely a challenge. If you can read and accept deliberate grammatical errors, then you'll be fine. At the start it may feel like the dodgey tense uses are a mistake, but you soon realise it's intentional, and somehow you have to find a way to not be bothered by them.
And although the chapters were split into Then and Now, I could never figure out what the actual tense of the book was. It regularly shifted between past and present within chapters and I found it a little bit jarring.
Final Impression
Kind of a strange book, but I enjoyed the story and characters. A cleverly written book that expertly shows how language is the greatest world-building tool in any writers arsenal.
This is difficult book to get into, but I would urge you to keep going, because it does get easier. Not to say that the writing style changes, you simply get used to it.
I read 27 pages before realising I didn't know what the fuck was going on. The next day I started again from the beginning, because I was determined to enjoy and understand this book. And I feel pretty confident I managed both of those things.
Characters
Like the writing style itself, the charcters are difficult to like at first.
The strange writing style made the them difficult to relate to, or even understand initially, but once the plot got going and I understood Teyr's motivations, she was a very likeable character in the end.
It was quite refreshing to see a female in the role of brutal, badass mercenary for a change, especially as she had a 'house husband' who was her opposite in that regard. A flipping of gender roles like this isn't something I see that often in fantasy, much less grimdark, so it made for a surprisingly unquie read for me.
And the female badassery doesn't stop with Teyr. Oh, no, she's no mere lip-service to feminism, there were multiple brutal female mercenaries in her group, which did wonders for the world-building, establishing an alternative look at gender normative within this world.
Teyr remained a nuanced character throughout and I think as a reader or a writer, that's all you can ask for.
Plot
A standalone fantasy novel. There's a collect of words you don't see often. It was quite refreshing to pick this up, knowing I wasn't about to get invested in a three, five, or ten books series. There's a certain feeling of freedom to that.
As for the plot itself, this is a revenge arc, and a satisfying one too, I might add.
Told in two parts, I found the jumping between Then and Now a little tricky to navigate at first, only because I kept forgetting whether I was in Then or Now. I'd have to keep flipping back to the chapter start and checking. A few chapters in though, I got into the swing of things and found it easy enough to follow.
It seems a strange style of storytelling. Half the book does the previously mentioned Then and Now thing. When the stroy fully catches up to Now, the narrative stays within the Now. Which is understandable. But then the story reaches its conclusion, and the remaining portion of the book is told through the format of letters back and forth between Teyr and Aude.
Though the letters were indeed interesting, and I glad they were included, but it felt a little odd. Like they were something g wholly separate to the story I'd just read. I felt like so much of Teyr and Aude's lives were brushed over, and I would've been equally as satisfied if the story ended when the main story arc wrapped itself up.
So in conclusion, I liked, but also why?
I will say though, that the pacing of this plot is fantastic. There's never a slow moment. Everything that happens pushes the plot forward.
Setting
I must admit, this book has some very intelligent world-building going on. There are zero info-dumps. No exposition. Nothing is explained. We're like babies thrown into the deep end. Our natural instinct is to simply float until someone saves us, but no one saves us in this book, we just continue to float through the world until we've been in the water long enough to suddenly realise we can swim.
The author creates his world through language. Not word choice, but language. As in made up words.
Again, this was a little tricky to navigate at first, but after you've been in the world a good long while, the strange slang starts sounding normal.
I even had a A Clockwork Orange moment when I first started, where I had to put the book down and consider whether I was actually going to understand any of it. But reading this book gave me similar moments of marvel. The brain it fantastic, how quickly it can recognise made-up words and give them meaning based purely on the context in which they're used. This book, if nothing else, makes a fine study on how easily language can be interpreted if one immerses themselves enough.
The world itself feels incredibly bleak and dangerous. It's the epitome of a grimdark novel, and I really appreciate how brutal the author got with his characters. Like, these guys suffered. I'm not just speaking about the deaths either, but the extend of character injures felt like a shock to my reader system. So often I expect characters to slip through battles unscathed, but this author went there, and he wasn't afraid to keep going there.
Writing Style
So as I brushed upon above, this writing style......it's a choice, that's for sure.
I don't think I could read endless books written this way, but finding a book like this every so often is, I feel, a genuinely beneficial read.
It shows me that even if the writing is a challenge and not what might he considered 'normal writing', my brain will adjust to this new idea of 'normal'.
Without getting too deep here, I just find the brain, and how it interprets language, to be fascinating.
That being said, this writing is definitely a challenge. If you can read and accept deliberate grammatical errors, then you'll be fine. At the start it may feel like the dodgey tense uses are a mistake, but you soon realise it's intentional, and somehow you have to find a way to not be bothered by them.
And although the chapters were split into Then and Now, I could never figure out what the actual tense of the book was. It regularly shifted between past and present within chapters and I found it a little bit jarring.
Final Impression
Kind of a strange book, but I enjoyed the story and characters. A cleverly written book that expertly shows how language is the greatest world-building tool in any writers arsenal.