A review by natcat
Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

adventurous emotional hopeful fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

An absolutel delight, I enjoyed this so much! I first read the AO3 version of this story several years ago, and enjoyed it a lot then, and it's fascinating to read this now and see what has changed. I loved Kiem and Jainan and their relationship so much, and all the secondary characters were great (and the bad guys suitably terrible!). This book's whole-hearted embrace of tropes from Only One Tent to Painful Miscommunication For Understandable Reasons to Rescue Mission Where One Party Doesn'  Think They Will Be Rescued was so good, and I both immensely enjoyed and was very emotionally moved by the story - listening to this as an audiobook there were multiple times where I had to stop washing the dishes or whatever other task I was doing to lie down and fully experience all the emotions!

I enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding hut was a little less convinced by the big picture Resolution plot; the timescale and the story scale on it didn't really work for me, and I think I would have preferred it if the story had stuck to the Iskat/Thea politics, rather than the big galactic politics. But I did really like all the details about Iskat, particularly the running joke that all Iskat fauna is terrifying and murderous.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was great, his voices for the characters were very consistent, and his tone and diction were excellent.
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