Gwen Newell's Reviews > The Winter King

This is a snowy book, an icy book, a book of wolves and Nordic villages and empty temples dominated by silent gods. Think Frozen meets Till We Have Faces for teens, featuring an Antichrist villain and underpinned by a eucatastrophic spin on the Orpheus myth. Yes, it's as enchanting as it sounds.

Cora hates the Winter King (the deity and center of her world) for his seeming injustice against her family. There’s no personal relationship with this god: it’s all bloody sacrifices, thick mystery, unrelenting judgment, and awful silence. She and her family are social pariahs with no way out. Besides struggling to keep her family alive (her most admirable quality), Cora sets out to expose the Winter King as a cruel and unjust god. In the end, she discovers the shocking truth about the real Winter King...but she also discovers a much less pleasant picture: herself. Her obsession with putting her god on trial ends up revealing the real Cora: a bitter, self-pitying, self-righteous girl who has much to learn about gratitude, joy, and self-sacrifice.

Undoubtedly the book's trickiest element is this last feature, the heroine. Christine Cohen has made Cora at times deeply objectionable (I won’t say “unlikeable,” because I liked her very much even while yelling at her), yet encourages us to stick with her anyway—quite successfully. I was simultaneously ashamed of Cora during her darkest moments and yet very willing to keep reading. After all, Cora is so much like us; we understand her dilemma; who wouldn’t be tempted to hate a god who cursed your family and offered no penance or cross whereby you could appease his wrath? So we root for Cora from the get-go. (Her love for her family and her exemplary work ethic are also hugely appealing.)

Cohen's prose is the easiest thing in the world. From page 1 to page 360, the words feel exhaled onto the page in one clean breath, not as quotable as they are clear; clarity is Cohen's chief eloquence. She also does a fantastic job building a world, setting a scene, creating vivid and realistic characters (I felt like I instantly knew everyone), and perhaps the hardest job in the world: crafting a romance that doesn’t make me gag. I think I shall have to marry Peder myself.

So curl up with your new fireside favorite, and step into a world that will change you...