The Winter King by C.L. Wilson the first book in the Weathermages of Mystral series.

 Good Book 

“Silver-blue eyes, clear and cold as glacier ice, cast upward, finding her in one swift, sharp instant, pinning her in place. All thought fled her mind. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She could only stare, captured and frozen, as the Winter King’s fearsome gaze held and plundered her.”

Khamsin or Kham, is one of four princesses in Summerlea, she is the secret one, hated and never claimed by her father. When her brother kills his brother and fleas with his fiancé King Winter of Wintercraig starts a war to avenge him and reclaim an heir. And when he wins that’s exactly what he does. He comes to the summer palace and demands a wife from her father. She thought it could be a new beginning for her, but its still a prison, the jailers er different the bars are the same, mistrust. Can Kham and Whinter overcome their mutual distrust or will the forces trying to keep then apart succeed in ripping them and the world apart along with them.

“We are agreed. Though I would rather see all Summerlea laid waste than surrender one of my beloved daughters to be your wife, one of the princesses has nonetheless agreed to be your bride. The wedding will take place Freikasday evening, three nights from now, and as any concerned father would when his daughter’s life hangs in the balance, I require proof of consummation before you leave Summerlea.”

Weathermages and in other worlds, snow giants, large wolflike monsters, and skills connected to old tribes make the book fit very well into the fantasy romance genre, I can see the influence Game of Thrones might have had on the author as the victims of the snow monsters can be reanimated and brought back as mindless puppets to fight again. It is like the white walkers.

The big bad is a man with godlike-powers who is trying to take over the King of whintercraig and the only thing that can stop it from happening is to have a child to thaw the frost in his soul.

““You should stay here and impregnate your little weatherwitch. That is my advice. Your idea in wedding her was a good one. Hold your child in your arms while there’s still warmth enough in you to feel the love you need to melt the Ice Heart. The surest way to drive back the garm is to rob their masters of hope for victory.””

Khamsin is, a strong female Character. I like her independence and the variety in her feelings, as she feels anger, fear, loneliness, pain, her emotional range is very varied and It makes her feel real. She values honor above everything else and idolized her brother because she thought she was the embodiment of her childhood hero, the legendary King Roland of Summerlea and an ancestor of hers.

“Long, long ago, as a small child crying herself to sleep, she’d decided Falcon was the reincarnation of Roland Triumphant, the Hero of Summerlea, the brave king who had defeated an overwhelming invasion force with his wit, his weathergifts, and a legendary sword reputed to be a gift from the Sun God himself. If anyone could coax the cold, savage folk of the north into concessions most favorable to Summerlea, Falcon could.”

Winter on the other hand is brash, closed off and very distrustful of Kham and everyone from Summerlea. He keeps her at an arms length, and I don’t like him for it. there is so much miscommunication that only happens because they can’t be honest with each other. But mostly because he only tells her the bare necessities, and levees her to imagine the rest.  

““Wait until we cross the border, and they’re back in their own lands. We’ll have to keep a sharp eye out then. Do you know what they do to anyone who breaks their laws? They strip them down to their bare skin, stake them out naked on a glacier, and leave them to die. ‘Mercy of the mountains’ they call it. Ha! Mercy indeed!” The girl’s furiously clacking knitting needles suddenly fell silent.”

There’s to much back and fourth and just as we see progress they destry it all again, I feel like it happens to much in this book, and I don’t like it, the ploy used was to obvious had winter just listened to what was said to him.

““ ‘Care’?” She all but screeched the word. “To what ‘care’ exactly do you refer? You mean the way you ignore me for weeks on end? That care? Or the way you have made it clear to every member of your court that I am to be ostracized and treated as a source of pathetic amusement?””

I liked the story but it was by no means my favorite on the list, it more of a bodice ripper, an old-fashioned romance with a tiny bit of spice added. Kham is more assertive than an woman in an old fashioned romance would be and that marks it up in my mind.

Ill recommend the book because it’s a good book even if its not my style, I wont finish the series since they are more like spinoffs, and I hate that kind of series.

4 out of 5 stars from me.