A review by pastaylor
A Betrayal in Winter by Daniel Abraham

5.0

Daniel Abraham’s books are often slow to get off the ground, more focused on nuances and subtleties of character interactions than on action. Thus, they can be a little hard to get into. The trade off is that they are incredibly rich and value writing and characterization as much if not more than plot and magic systems. There’s a little magic in here, in the form of the andats, but this is basically a modern take on Macbeth, with a very sympathetic female character. Abraham understands female characters, and does a great job of writing them and making them sympathetic, even when they are doing bad things. The betrayal mentioned in the title happens on multiple levels between multiple characters. I loved it. The first book took me some time to get into, and I was annoyed by the voice of seedless in the audiobook. The voices are better here, and it really builds on the characters and relationships developed in the first book. Highly recommended.