Seasonal Fears

By: Seanan McGuire

Narrated by: Amber Benson

Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

From New York Times best-selling author Seanan McGuire, Seasonal Fears is the extraordinary companion novel to Middlegame.

The king of winter and the queen of summer are dead. The fight for their crowns begins!

Melanie has a destiny, though it isn’t the one everyone assumes it to be. She’s delicate; she’s fragile; she’s dying. Now, truly, is the winter of her soul.

Harry doesn’t want to believe in destiny, because that means accepting the loss of the one person who gives his life meaning, who brings summer to his world.

So, when a new road is laid out in front of them—a road that will lead through untold dangers toward a possible lifetime together—walking down it seems to be the only option.

But others are following behind, with violence in their hearts.

It looks like Destiny has a plan for them, after all....

“One must maintain a little bit of summer even in the middle of winter.” (Thoreau)

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com Imprint Quarterly.

©2022 Seanan McGuire (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

As good as the first-

A little slower and with a protagonist who faced the problem of reintroducing the entire cosmology from the first book; But so worth sticking with it to live in this world again for longer.

Meh

Middlegame is a thousand times better. The narration style is often times too quirky for my taste.

Love the story; recording had quirks

Without a doubt, I love this installation of Seanen McGuire’s story, and I love the reader/performer. The version that downloaded for me had some glitches and skips and a couple things I think were supposed to be edited out.

Even more excellent than Middlegame

Seanan McGuire just keeps getting stronger as a writer, and I'm so pleased with her success. And the best part is that you really don't need to read the first one to get this one; seasons incarnated into people are much easier to grasp than math and language. Seeing the old gang was lovely without getting too cumbersome, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening.
The accents are distinct, even if I hate the way the author says the word 'again' the performance was still good. Will definitely listen again someday.

Seanan at her best!

Fun, well paved and innovative story telling like this author has been delivering for more than a decade! A fabulous ride through our world, almost. I'm just waiting for number 3!

Great story

Great story, and a continuation of the series. I like the introduction of old characters from the middlegame

Excellent story, horrible narrator.

I listened to this book first, not knowing until later that it was meant to be a sequel to Middlegame. Oops. It didn't dampen my enjoyment of this book, or my appreciation of the one that should have come before it. At least, not my enjoyment of the story itself. I love Ms McGuire's books, but the narration on this was unbearable. The story is worth reading, it is fascinating and kept me engaged, entirely in spite of the horrible reading. The accents are abysmal, the voices provided for each character are distinct, but not at all in a good way. Frequently the wrong intonation is used in dialogue, giving jarringly incorrect meanings to what is being said.

If you have the ability to read a printed book, this is one of the times to do it. The story is amazing, and I loved the characters and their struggles. I loved learning the mythical underpinnings of this weird world, and seeing how and where they overlaid the world as we know it. I want to read the Up and Under series to see more of the world building, and I hope there are more volumes to come in the series. I just really, really hope they find a new VA.

*I did use the review of Middlegame here, as the same praise and criticism applies to both books in the series. The VA is the same for both books, and her delivery did not improve from one book to the next, unfortunately.

It's was ok

I was expecting more but it was just ok the first book was better.

Could you just actually explain anything, but really this time?

I'd gladly rate Middlegame 10/5 stars. I'd even tell you it's in my top 10. As a granddaughter of a librarian, books found themselves at my fingertips without asking. I was blessed to have access to read all the things, all the time. This book reeks of the ridiculous inability to expand on even simplistic explanations. I love reading something with plans in place to surprise you when you don't expect it. Middlegame gave us that. What I absolutely despise is a continuation of confusion for the sake of lack of explanation. Corn Jenny, Jack Frost. The utter lack of ANY alchemical explanation for creation of beings and reviving them, etc is just a hole in the story. Go further- give us something. It doesn't even have to be real but seriously, stop giving us endless explanations of something you'll never give the explanation of. It doesn't create mystery as what I assume is desired. It leaves unwanted craters in what could be an intricate and immense alter or dystopian world. You're better than this--

Interesting premise but repetitive

The basic story is interesting - it’s in the same universe as Middlemarch which I liked. But this one has a very minimal plot, and is full of a lot of explication dialogue and not much action until the end. There is a lot of explaining the basic situation to the main characters over and over again and it became really tedious.
The performance is fine although the voice given to the young character wore on me. I wish the story had flipped between time periods & had different perspectives instead of different characters just explaining the basic situation over and over. Or a more mysterious reveal of the plot. We (readers) get it already!