The Winner's Curse (First Volume)

 The Winner's Curse

French edition : Lumen

English edition : Young readers

Number of pages : 450

Genre : Epic Fantasy

Publication year : 2014 (2015 for France)

Author : Marie Rutkoski

Summary

Kestrel is the daughter of the Empire’s most powerful general. As all young women she will have to make a choice for her future life soon : marry herself to a man or enlist in the army. Nevertheless she is very stubborn and want to be free. Moreover, during a sunny morning, Kestrel is attracted by the sale of a slave. She doesn’t like this kind of trade but this slave is very intriguing for her. What will happen with this slave ? His sale won’t only jostle Kestrel’s life, it will jostle the whole balance’s Empire.

Criticism

    For this first volume, I found the story a little bit long at the beginning. In fact, the first part is really important because it settles the settings. That’s why at first, we are a little bit lost because there are a lot of information that seems to be useless but which are very very very important for later. In the second part of the book the action begin to arrive. I found it a little bit long too, and I think I was right because these actions are nothing compared to what will happen in the following book. We can’t imagine what will happen, this is just crazy ! However, during the reading of this first volume, we can notice the sharpness of the different political and military strategies used by all the characters. These strategies are so intelligent and smart and at the same time they seem so real. That’s one of the reason why we start to be transported to another world.

    Concerning the characters, I will mainly concentrate my analysis on Kestrel because, in this first volume Arin is mysterious for us. We don’t have a lot of Arin’s point of view and when we have some, we don’t really know what he is feeling, we don’t know his emotions, his troubles...He acts with the reader like he acts with Kestrel : he wears a mask even with us, and as a reader it’s really intriguing. In fact, usually we are the person who perfectly knows the principal character and in this case we know Arin as common person even if we have a direct access to his thoughts. So, I was supposed to talk mostly about Kestrel but finally Arin is an enigmatic character who need to be criticized (in a kindly way, like all the criticism I make; I always try to be kindly even if the misinterpretation linked to the language make the task difficult, but I love this, otherwise I won’t be writing on this blog). So Kestrel has a smart and clever mind, she always succeed in pulling the wool over her opponents, over her father, over her friends and even over us. We never know which strategy she will use in front of new situations. It’s all the more surprising because we are aware of her strengths and her weaknesses. A thing that I like a lot in her personality is that she knows who she is and she knows her values but she doesn’t know she is strong enough to surpass herself. This evolution is nice to observe all along the reading.

    Regarding Marie Rutkoski’s way with word, it was a real pleasure to read what she has written. Indeed, during the whole story, all was flowing and there was a lot of metaphors. When we read The Curse we have a lot of image thanks to this literary device and it’s very enjoyable. Besides this way with words is representative of Kestrel’s sharpness mind, thanks to it we have a better understanding of the character and we can have a better identification to Kestrel.

Final conclusion

This first volume is little bit long to read but it’s really important for the rest of the plot. So if like me, you didn’t really become filled with the story, please don’t give up and read the other volumes because it is worth it !

So are you going to read it ?

The song

I wanna be your slave, Måneskin. Just for the fun between the title and the context of the story.

My note : 7/10

Characters : 1,5/2         My taste: 1,5/2

Story : 3/4                  Originality: 1/2