Winter of the Owl

Seasons of the Lukoi, Book 1

By: Iris Foxglove

Narrated by: Kris Antham

Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Sava has the best house in all of Lukos. He built it himself, dreaming of the day when he and Milan, the man he loved, could live there and brave the harsh winters of Lukos together—only to be devastated when Milan was found dead in the spring. Fraught with grief, Sava resigns himself to spending his winters alone.

Then a stranger appears on his doorstep, and everything changes.

Victor is a scholar from Gerakia, a land known for its long summers and vibrant history, and he has never been more unprepared in his life. Abandoned on the inhospitable island of Lukos after a disastrous relationship, Victor has to adapt quickly to survive. It helps, of course, that he’s taken in by Sava, who has the biggest heart of any man Victor has ever known. Victor and Sava start to make a home together, growing close as snow falls outside, but the true danger of a Lukos winter is closer than they suspect....

©2021 Iris Foxglove (P)2022 Iris Foxglove

A Lukoi Story!!

So this spin off is definitely a stand alone from the Starian Cycle series (though that's super good and you should listen to it) and I absolutely loved it! Victor is sent away to the harsh island of Lukos when his relationship to his professor comes to light. There, he's partnered with Sava, who is grieving the loss of the one he thought would be his mate. The beauty in this story is how Sava sees Victor's strengths and gives him the space to understand how unhealthy Victor's previous relationship truly was while building his confidence. Sava also has to heal from the loss and feelings of not being enough. These two are exceptionally sweet together and I love how we get to experience Lukoi customs which are quite different from any of the previous stories. Kirs Antham's performance is spot on and his ability to switch between characters is crazy good! This story is truly unique and the characters very memorable!

Cozy with wolves!

This was stinking adorable! I find the world in this series to be super interesting.

Speedy the snow cat was a perfect addition to the story, and I loved his random cat quirks and arcs.

Snowed in for the winter vibes, caretaking and working through grief and insecurities. I really enjoyed this, plus the narration was two thumbs up! Kris Antham did a great job

Cute

This book wasn't what I thought it'd be.
I thought the love story would develop over a longer period of time and was a little disappointed with that. That being said, I did enjoy the love story. I liked both characters. The description of the book made it seem like the long winters were...long but it didn't feel that way but that was the only disappointment.
I thought the narrator was great except for when doing a woman's voice. I find that I'd rather a male narroator just lower his voice a bit, make his voice softer and maybe a bit quieter versus changing the whole voice trying to sound like a woman which rather hurts my ears. There wasn't much need for the women's voices and he did good, but would have been much better just softening his voice while lowering the volume level, I think.
The overall story wasn't epic or anything but cute and enjoyable.

Lovely fantasy

I picked this up months ago and didn’t get around to listening to it for awhile. The beginning didn’t hook me as it starts a bit abruptly, which I found confusing. But I’m so glad I kept listening! It’s a lovely and interesting story of love and triumph. Very sweet and satisfying!

pleasant

New to this author duo. Wanted to see how they handled D/s as an accepted social norm. It was nice but felt a little thin. It was low-ish angst because the terrible things were mostly past and potentially bad situations kept turning out well. Even danger kitty turns out to be friendly with only minor scratches. Twinkish Victor gets his dream/nightmare wish of going to study language on a distant island, but not in a safe group. He gets housed with bearish dom Sava, instead of being left to die. Everything mostly goes well & it’s a pleasant story of them getting to know each other. Oddly, I think the D/s dynamic could be removed without affecting the plot, and it wasn’t as much of a focus as I was expecting from the review that sent me to try it. I’m still going to try the next in the series to see how it goes.

Worldbuilding: Mostly mild variations on regular life with spirit myths that might be real, in this book. The only thing that threw me out of the zone was the spreader bar. These folks live on the edge of survival with minor outside world influence and few resources yet a guy with presumably only one lover has a spreader bar tucked away for emergencies? There wasn’t enough reasoning or detail working up to it to justify that level of detail in equipment. It needed more buildup or some evidence that our bearish Dom talked kink to the community at large. I don’t mind the fact of it, it just came out of nowhere.

Steam: Medium Low. Most of the book wasn’t focused on the sexytimes dynamics or the D/s dynamic which seemed to come and go. The scenes were low in detail and cosy more than anything.

Narration: The narrator had a calm, serious vibe which worked. The choice for accents for the islanders was “Russian influenced English”, the kind used in movies so you know they’re supposed to be speaking Russian. Fine. Good audio quality. A tad faster than usual so I had to slow it from my usual uptempo listening pace.

Kris Antham's Voice and Iris Foxglove's Story is M

This is book one of a new series for Iris Foxglove that's set in Lukoi, a frozen land in the same world as Staria (where Iris's other series is set). I loved both MCs and Speedy the Cat is a wonderful side character. Kris's amazing voice brings even more emotion to the story and really brings it to life!

Absolutely amazing

This book has brought me so much joy listening to it I loved everything about this book

And kris did a magnificent job bringing this story to life