Trilogy: The Winner’s Curse

Author: Marie Rutkoski

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Fantasy.

Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux

Year: 2014 - 2016

Ranking: 4,5/ 5

  

Synopsis

Winning what you want may cost you everything you love... 

As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: She can join the military or get married, but Kestrel has other intentions. 

One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him—with unexpected consequences. It is not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin. 

However, he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined. 

Set in a richly imagined new world, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski is a story of deadly games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.

The Author

Marie Rutkoski is the author of the YA novel The Shadow Society and the children's fantasy series The Kronos Chronicles, including The Cabinet of Wonders, The Celestial Globeand The Jewel of the Kalderash.

Marie grew up in Bolingbrook, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), as the oldest of four children. She holds a BA from the University of Iowa and a PhD from Harvard University. Marie is currently a professor at Brooklyn College, where she teaches Renaissance Drama, children's literature and fiction writing. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.

Personal Experience with This Book

This trilogy is one of those who will stay with me for a long time. I feel that although it had some shortcomings, I will remember these characters and their story for long. I really enjoyed having read it, I liked to have known of this world that Marie Rutkoskie created and I loved getting to know Kestrel and Arin.

When I read the first book, I was so excited about the trilogy I could not wait to get back to go into this world. That made me read the next book the following month and read the third one this month. I'll leave the review I did to the first book HERE. That way you can see how excited I was when I started the trilogy.

With the second book, what I felt while reading the first one did not happen to me. There are more political intrigues and many situations that for me, at first were unnecessary. Although I realized at the end of the book that nothing that Marie put on it was unnecessary. Even the most minimal words someone had said made sense to the end of the frame. It cost me a lot more work to read the second book than the first and I think that was because there were many more scenes of political debate. This does not mean that the book is boring or anything, just that cost me a lot more work to finish it because I read slower.

By the third book I was more than sold. The way in which the second book ends is GREAT. You stay expecting much more than what you get and just cannot wait to see what path will take the story. Believe me it would have been awful to have to wait a year to read that last book. It was a great relief for me to open the third book just as the second ended. The third book is great in every way. We have many more battles, more political intrigue, we have more strategies. You can see how Marie managed to think of every detail and you will not miss anything. Additionally, this book is where you can see the love between Kestrel and Arin flourish. I loved to finally see some development in this couple.

When I started reading the trilogy fell in love with the main charracters. I said that I liked them even more together than apart because I felt they complemented each other. Throughout the trilogy that feeling did not change, but after getting to know them better I learned to love them both separate and together. The characters develop, grow, and learn to value each other, to love each other unconditionally and above all, to trust each other for more than situations seem not want this to pass.

Kestrel from the beginning was a girl with a strong character and a way to deal with situations that I, as a reader, admired very much. As the story progresses, Kestrel suffers from the decisions she makes and you end up seeing her in some way or another, more fragile than before. That without losing her main essence. I liked seeing her fragile side; it made her more real and more reliable. At the end of the third book, Kestrel is a stronger girl, but not because she has improved in battle or because her status has been maintained; you see her that way because despite everything that happened in the course of the three books, Kestrel remains. I liked that she did not get over all the obstacles that Marie put in her way, we are left with a Kestrel that even when we are on the last page of the last book, is still struggling to overcome what she has in front of her. Therefore, I think that Kestrel is a character that will stay with me for many years.

Arin, on the other side, becomes more mature, more determined. It takes a lot to put his people on his shoulders and take it to where it leads. He feels troubled with himself, still he feels guilty about falling in love with someone who is part of those who have done so much damage to his country. You can see him trying to trust Kestrel but also blaming himself for doing so. However, all those situations in which he is involved, makes him become a deep and determined person. With fears, many fears, but with a bigger, than all those fears, illusion. An illusion that he wants to share, above all things, with Kestrel.

I also liked very much to get to know Roshar. I am not very sure yet if I like him or not because he often drove me crazy. But I think it was an important for Arin and Kestrel’s life that Roshar was there. I felt it should be there no matter what. Sarsine is one of those characters who, although we saw very little of her, she felt as present in every way. Other minor characters had a lot of history too, even the Queen felt as a deep character, and that much of it does not see.

There is however one thing I did not like at all of this trilogy. And that thing were Verex and Risha. Marie did not take advantage of these two characters. They felt as filling characters to me. I mean, Verex is the Crown Prince and Risha is supposed to be a very important Princess. Why do not give them a greater participation throughout the story? Why leave them on one side? I cannot understand it. I feel that these are two characters that Marie could have gotten more out of, even feel that we could have been given an entirely different perspective of the story if she would had included their points of view. We would have a better picture of everything that happened and not just what was happening around Kestrel and Arin.

I recommend the trilogy lot. As I said before, I think it's one of those trilogies that I think will stay in my memory for a long time, one of those that I will read again in the future and that whenever the reread it, it would be as good as it was last time. If you like fantasy, romance, stories with medieval atmosphere and the political and military environment, I think this series is for you. If you do not like what I said before, I still think this is one of those series that people gradually enjoy. Read it, you are not going to regret it.