The Winner's Curse

By: Marie Rutkoski

Narrated by: Kate Rawson

Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Winning what you want may cost you everything you love.

They were never meant to be together. As a general's daughter, 17-year-old Kestrel enjoys an extravagant and privileged life. Arin has nothing but the clothes on his back. Then Kestrel makes an impulsive decision that binds Arin to her. Though they try to fight it, they can't help but fall in love. In order to be together, they must betray their people...but to be loyal to their country, they must betray each other.

Set in a new world, The Winner's Curse is a story of rebellion, duels, ballroom dances, wicked rumors, dirty secrets, and games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.

©2014 Marie Rutkoski (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Not a good fit for me

Where do I start with The Winner's Curse, ladies and gents?


In a nutshell: the prose is lovely despite the plot being a bit too naive for the age group. It feels like middle grade. Any sort of controversial, overly sexual or extremely violent topics are hushed out, so it always feels like the overall picture is muted. You won't see brightness of Katsa or Celaena or even quiet dignity of Avry from Maria V. Snyder's books, but then you get passages like that:


“The snow fell on her, it fell on him, but Kestrel knew that no single flake could ever touch them both. She didn’t look back when he spoke again. “You don’t, Kestrel, even though the god of lies loves you.”



and they strike you and stay with you for awhile.


After reading many other books in the same genre I'd say that The Winner's Curse is a simplistic fantasy romance for young readers. It's clean, so it will probably work for MG readers as well, but it doesn't have enough scope for a good fantasy (Kristin Cashore for example) or complexity of characters' feelings (I'm looking at Melina Marchetta right now) to become something more striking. What works for it is the writing style itself in all its straightforward loveliness.


In the audio version of the book the narrator, Justine Eyre, has done a fab job depicting Kestrel's slippery way of thinking, and I did enjoyed listening to it. There was also an interesting preview of the next book which sounded more promising than The Winner's Curse. I'll be tempted to continue with the series based on the excerpt.


Overall, not bad, but I'm on the fence about recommending it.

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I was expecting more somehow. More strategizing and longer wow worthy moves by Kestral since everyone kept saying she was a strategic and intellegent, just more political movements that would impress me. Unfortunately, I didn't get that as much as I got from The Goblin Emperor. Other than that, sure, it made me cry a bit, but I find that it was quite predictable in the romance department. I think I place that blame on how much other books I have already read though and a better neighbouring royalty as slaves romance (Captive Prince) that it kind of ruined this for me a bit. I especially really disliked how Kestral kept promising to be/do something but kept changing her mind, that was infuriating. But overall, it was okay I guess. I'll probably continue just to see how it ends.