 Okay, so, after a lot of delay, I have finally finished reading Winter World Awakening, and, uh... I gotta say, it could have been a lot worse. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, that might sound surprising, because when I've read the first two books, I said that they were literally the worst series I've ever read. And I think it still is the worst, because the first two are just completely irredeemable in just about every way, and really the only reason I continued reading, because normally, if something was that bad, I wouldn't have read the second or third one, but the reason I kept going in this case was because it was genuinely fascinating to me how absolutely everything was done wrong. And I mean that. I mean, the characters, the writing itself, the plot, the world-building was... It was all done really terribly, and it was just... It came together in such a way that it was just fascinating to watch it fall apart. But honestly, this last book is not as terrible. Like, it's still bad, don't get me wrong, but really, as far as climaxes go, this one could have been worse. There is some level of competence in there. I actually want to do something a little different for this review, so rather than like a regular one where I have a long section where I talk about specific points I liked and disliked, and then have a brief spoiler section, or like my reviews of the last two books in the series where I just kind of praddle on about everything I hated without any concern for spoilers, this one, I'm going to kind of summarize the majority of the plot here, so that way I can go into more detail about what specifically I hate about it and what few bits do work. So my brief non-spoiler part will be... I still don't recommend these books, obviously. If you read the first two and you liked them, then I guess go ahead and read this one. Again, as far as climaxes go, it could have been a lot worse, but overall, yeah, it's still pretty awful. So this one starts off right after the last one ended, or not right after, a couple of weeks after the last one ended, and Hunger and the Pratheria are gathering up, preparing to take over Hungary. Meanwhile, Hungary is being attacked from multiple directions by Russians and Austrians and all them, and Anna's cousin, Noemi, has gone... she's been kidnapped, and so this one starts off with her cousin Mattias and some of their other friends going to rescue her. And Gabor, Anna's Roma boyfriend, is gone at this point. He left to go join the Hungarian army, however, right before he did so, he gave her this paper, or this set of paper, rather, where if you write a message on it, it appears on the other one. It's magic. And I have to take a moment to talk about this because that's really stupid. I'm not saying that magic in this world couldn't do that. I'm just saying that if that was a thing, if long-range instant communication was a thing in this world, that would change everything, okay? And it's not that expensive or that rare. It's not a new invention, I don't think. It's just something Gabor was able to just buy. And just the military applications of that alone, being able to communicate with different parts of your army that are spread across hundreds of miles, and you don't have to send an old-school horse messenger or anything, those are huge, those are huge implications, and they never mention them before this, and they never mention them afterwards. They only use them to communicate between Gabor and Anna, that's it. But anyways, Anna and Matias and their friends go into this cave to rescue Noemi. However, one of their Pratherian friends betrays them, and Matias gets captured, and Anna has to run away. However, Anna gets caught not long afterwards by a soldier, and she gets brought back to Vienna. While she's there, she finds that the new emperor, Emperor Franz Josef, has had some sort of curse put on him, so he's in this comatose state almost, and the emperor's mother asks Anna, hey, if you can use your spell-breaking ability to save him, then I will let you go. And the curse is really complex and difficult, so Anna has some trouble doing it, but she is able to break the curse, and she saves the emperor's life, essentially. However, the emperor's mother betrays her and sends her off to the Russians, because the Russians want her, apparently. The emperor's mother doesn't know why, but she's like, okay, whatever, I hate this bitch anyway, so she sends her off, and then the Russians immediately hand her over to the Pratheria, and Anna gets taken to her cousin Noemi. Meanwhile, while this is happening, because remember, this is split between Anna's and Matias's point of view, he manages to escape, and he finds his Turkish friend Bahadir, who, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, I don't know, I don't speak Turkish, but he finds him, and they manage to go back to the world tree, and he starts training with his shape-shifting telto's powers under the war god Hadur. And I just want to say that this entire book, the plot of it, is just the main characters getting captured and escaping over and over again. And I mean, you're probably going to notice that yourself as I go on here, but that is probably the biggest issue with this book, because that is a very fundamental problem with the actual setup of the plot, okay? There's no... how do I even put it? It's just dumb and frustrating to see the same things happen over and over and over again. So while Matias is training with Hadur to control his telto's powers, he also gets trained in military tactics and strategy, which, okay, that makes sense, like Hadur is a war god, he's not just good at fighting, he's also good at strategizing, that makes sense, I can buy that, and they take a little bit of time to mention that Bahadir is apparently a really good tactician. I just want you to remember that going forward, because it's never mentioned again until right at the end. And while I do think that these chapters with Matias training are actually okay, like they're not terrible, because in the last book when we got Matias's POV, most of his chapters were awful, I mean they were just boring, or he was just being an asshole, or doing something stupid, and I didn't like it. Whereas in this one, these bits where he's training are actually okay, it actually goes into some depth about how his powers work, and yeah, it's okay. It's more interesting than Anna's because for most of the book she's in captivity and she's just sort of watching other people do shit, so his are better, but they're still not great. Now while Anna is captive, she and Noemi are, you know, glad to be with each other, and she is sending secret messages back and forth with Gabor, and he's talking about how the war isn't going that well, all that sort of stuff, and Anna is trying to find some information on the praetaria, and if she finds anything important she's going to send it to him, but she doesn't yet. And also, while they're there, she overhears Noemi talking with Hunger, and apparently they're in love now. Forgive me if I missed anything in the first two books that would have hinted at that, but there was, I don't think there was anything in those that hinted that Noemi and Hunger were into each other in the slightest, I don't even remember if they met in the first two books, and considering that, again, they're meeting in the context of him kidnapping her and holding her hostage, that's a little creepy, but even setting that aside, there's no emotion here. We can't see them fall in love, therefore why should we care? Okay, I guess emotion's not necessary in a romance, whatever, we'll just move past that. Anna's Uncle Paul is also there with them. He's a really powerful magic user, I just want to remind you that he's there because he hasn't been that important since partway through the first book, but whatever, just remember he's there because it becomes important later. Meanwhile, Matias gets frustrated just standing around doing his training, so he actually goes off into an Austrian camp, an Austrian army camp, and he plans on destroying a bunch of their supplies, but he gets caught, and so he winds up turning into his dragon form, which he can't properly control, and he kills a whole bunch of soldiers. And I mean, he feels guilty about it and goes back to training, which I guess could work in some contexts, but in this one, like, dude, there's a war, you're at war with these guys, and you're specifically trying to destroy their supplies, which will mean a lot of them might die, or not get proper medical attention, and then die, and so I'm not sure what you were expecting there, but okay, whatever, we'll just... He goes back to train, and then Hadouard also decides, okay, you know what, let's actually go out and do some stuff. So they join up with the Hungarian army, and they meet the guy in charge, and he's kind of an idiot, he's extremely an idiot. It's really kind of over the top, honestly, because if they had just made it seem like, okay, he's doing his best, but he's not quite up to the task, that would have been one thing, but by making him seem like just such an obvious dumbass, it makes all the people following him also seem like dumbasses, and well, if they're all dumbasses, I don't particularly want to see them win. While he's there, he also meets Gabor, and Gabor is, I guess, he's still fine. I said in the first two books that he was the only okay character, and while I will get into the ways that some of the other characters become better than they were before, Gabor is still fine. There's really nothing that changes about him to make him awful, and he talks with Matias about Anna and how her and Noemi are okay, and yeah, nothing super important, nothing else super important happens here. I'm not going to re-record that, I don't care. Now Anna, while she's in captivity, starts getting trained by Vasilisa to better control her chimera powers, her ability to break spells, and okay, so they go into more detail about the magic system here, except it is kind of dumb, because apparently all things have souls, even inanimate objects, and so Anna's powers can actually break things other than spells, or unmake things, they describe it, and so they have her try and unmake rocks, so the rocks just crumble apart in the dust, or at one point they capture a soldier and they have her unmake his eyes, so his eyes disappear and he starts screaming in pain, and the thing is that that's not the worst idea for a power I've ever heard, it's just that Anna's already kind of overpowered, and she's just getting worse now. So not only can she break most spells that people try and throw at her, and not only can she in theory cast spells twice as powerful as a normal person, but she can also just break apart everything without even using magic and without knowing spells at all. That's just, you know, she's overpowered, but she's too much of a dumbass to use it properly, and so that's just frustrating to read about. Her uncle Paul is still there, and he's still just being kind of mysterious, and it's clear that he's up to something, but Anna doesn't know what, and she also, while she's writing letters back and forth with Gabor, she gets one letter, which has some sweet stuff that he wrote about her on it, and it also has some information about the movement of Hungarian soldiers, and she doesn't erase it because you're supposed to, like, say a magic word to erase it, and she doesn't do that, she keeps it because it's like, ooh, he's wrote sweet stuff about me here, and then the letters get stolen not long after, and so the Pratheria and their allies find out about the soldier movements, and a whole bunch of people die because of Anna, because she's a selfish bitch. Yeah, I want you to keep that in mind, because even though later on she gets a little bit better, shockingly, she'll always be just the most awful protagonist ever. Now Matjes and Hadoor continue fighting with the Hungarian army, and eventually Hadoor gets fed up and just takes charge, he decides to lead it, and Matjes, who I should mention, one of his other Taltos powers, is that he's able to sort of separate his soul from his body and sort of go into the dream world, I guess you'd call it, and you can visit people in their dreams, and so he visits Anna, and they talk a little bit. And while they're talking, apparently there are other wars all over Europe, like Pratheria are still coming out all over the place, and there are other revolutions, like there really were in 1848, which is... okay, whatever. That's a little weird, but I'm not going to get into too much detail about it. I made a whole world-building video about that several months ago, and I don't want to retread old ground, and I don't want to harp on it more, so just get whatever, it's kind of dumb, whatever, move on. And then not long after this, hunger gets betrayed by the other Pratherian leaders, and they kill him, including Vasilisa and this other new guy named Chernabog, who comes up, and Anna and Noemi are like, oh, that's so horrible, he was evil, whatever, and Matias is actually in his soul form watching this. And so when hunger dies, he actually is able to grab hunger's soul, push it back into his body, then they heal his body, and bring him back to life. Vasilisa actually helps them with this, because I guess she's a friend now? I don't know, it's never really explained that well. And I also just want to point out how this makes death completely... just completely pointless in this universe, or meaningless, actually, is a better word for it, it's completely meaningless. And... no, I don't think I need to explain why that's bad, just death is meaningless in this universe. Now, right after this, Matias actually gets captured by Vasilisa, his soul does, when it's separated from his body, but using his Talos powers, he's able to transform Anna and Noemi into birds, so they fly away, and they escape, and they join the Hungarian army. And I don't really have an organic place to put this in the rants, I just want to say that the dialogue in this book is really bad, it was bad in the first two, but in this one it's still pretty awful. Nothing people say ever sounds natural, it sounds like someone is trying to emulate Shakespeare almost, but also make it sound more like how normal people talk, or something? I don't know, it's just not done very well, and I just wanted to throw that out there. So when Anna and Noemi reach the Hungarian army, they find that, hey, Russians are allied with the Pratherians, and they're coming in and attacking us from another direction, even though they already kind of knew this, so it should be that surprising, but whatever, I'm not going to dwell on that too much. And Hador gets removed from his position as head of the army, because he was never officially appointed to it anyways, he just sort of came in and said, I'm in charge now, so I can't blame them for that too much. And Anna and Gabor meet up again, and even though Anna was very irresponsible with the messages he sent her, and admittedly this is a little bit his fault as well, but even though she was irresponsible with that, and even though she let sensitive information get into enemy hands, which resulted in the deaths of a whole bunch of Gabor's friends, and a whole bunch of loyal soldiers that they're supposed to be trying to protect, he just forgives her for it. And again, it's partially his fault too, but for fuck's sake, dude, where do you draw the line? It also turns out that Gabor can use magic now, which, I mean, it makes sense in context, because after the binding was destroyed, lots of normal people found that, hey, I can use magic now, but it also feels like they should have brought that up in the previous book, because the previous book was a lot lighter on plot anyways, and they could have used an extra- whatever, I don't care. So yeah, they're talking for a while, and he's saying that he's accidentally using his powers to control people's minds, and he feels kind of guilty about it, and Anna says, eh, it's not a big deal, and then they bang, I think, I think they bang, I don't know, it's written in such a way where it's honestly kind of hard to tell what happens. After this, Anna sneaks away from the army to find Emperor Franz Joseph, because now he's all well and good, and she tries to plead with him to stop the fighting, and she says like, well, hey, I saved your life, and we're friends, you know I'm not a terrible person, can we please, like, maybe come to a diplomatic solution here, and he says, you know, I feel kind of guilty, but no, and that whole scene was very pointless, honestly, I don't even know if I needed to bring it up here, but I just... So Paul comes to Anna in a dream, and he offers to trade Maches' soul for her, and she agrees to it, and so she tells some others, and they say, okay, yeah, we're going to make this trade here, it's essentially trading hostages, and Hadur comes back, his absence was totally pointless, and I don't know why they threw it in there, so Anna and the others go to make the trade, and it looks like they got Maches' soul back in his body, but they get betrayed, and the Pratheria attack them, and Hadur is killed, and Noemi is killed, and I guess I'm supposed to be sad about that, but honestly, Noemi is just such a nothing character for the majority of the series, that it's impossible to feel bad about that, and then they also take Maches' body, so now that Anna is back in captivity, again, Vasilisa reveals that she is actually Baba Yaga, and I guess... Here's the thing, that could have actually been a pretty good twist, but it's not foreshadowed in the slightest. The thing is, Baba Yaga is just this character from Slavic folklore who I'm not very familiar with, just because I'm not all that familiar with Slavic folklore in general, but the thing is, her being a Pratheria makes sense in the context of this world, it does, but the thing is that they never mentioned Baba Yaga before this at all, like if they had just taken a couple of lines even in previous books, or in this one, to say something about like, oh, there used to be Baba Yaga, but she's dead, or, ooh, Baba Yaga did all these terrible things, but she's just a legend, you know, she's not real, then maybe Vasilisa being revealed as her could have been kind of impactful, but as it stands, it's really a pointless twist that doesn't mean anything. So the Pratherian army attacks the Hungarian army while they're also fighting some of the other human armies, and Vasilisa talking to Maches in his new... well, his old body. You know, he's kind of emaciated now because his soul was separated from it, so his body deteriorated a little, but he's still alive and he still has his powers, and Vasilisa basically convinces him that it's impossible for their side to win, so we should just try and end this as quickly as possible to avoid as much bloodshed as possible, therefore you should help us, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, but Maches goes for it, and so he turns into a dragon and starts wrecking shit. It's pretty dumb. Meanwhile, Paul finally starts telling Anna about what his big evil plan is, so he starts showing her some visions of the future, of all her friends dying and her home being destroyed and a bunch of horrible stuff, right? And he reveals to her that everything in existence is made of soul threads, or soul stuff, I think they call it, and so they already touched on that earlier with her being able to destroy inanimate objects and stuff, but he mentions that time is also made of soul threads, and so apparently she can use her powers, the same powers she uses to destroy threads of magic, to alter the timeline, and he wants her to alter the past in order to make it so that he was born emperor. This is another twist that really isn't bad, and the plan itself isn't bad either, like as far as evil villain ideas go, that's kind of interesting, it's not 100% original, but I kind of liked it. The problem is that, again, just like the Bobby Yaga thing, it comes so out of nowhere, and it's so reliant on new information that we weren't given until just this moment that it just falls flat, and so after talking for a bit, Anna realizes that, hey, by changing the past, I can make the world better, I can do this, and so she actually thinks that, hey, let's go along with it, but she also, not long after that, she realizes, you know what, everybody thinks that they're making the world a better place when they do stuff like that, everybody thinks that the costs are always going to be worth it, because she realizes that if she changes the past, then that's going to result in people not being born, and other people dying, and that there's really no way around that, and she starts to stop and think, well, who am I to play God? You know, maybe I shouldn't be doing this, and this moment just caught me off guard, because I realized, wow, she has actual development, she's actually changing a little bit, she's realizing, like, you know what, maybe it's not right of me to have this power, or rather it's not right of me to try to use this power to do something like that, and so, yeah, for the first time in all of these books, I had a little bit of respect for Anna. So she tries to betray Paul, it doesn't work, he picks up on it right away, and he actually rips her second soul out of her body, and tries to alter the timeline himself, which, okay, apparently, he can rip souls out of people's bodies, whatever, I'm not going to dwell on that too much, but while that happens, she is actually able to use magic properly now, because she only has one soul, and she picks up a sword, and she fucking stabs Paul with it, and honestly, this is actually a really badass scene, like, it's kind of like that scene in the last Twilight movie, where you see that vision of all the vampires fighting the evil vampires, and Bella, like, has fire, and she's about to kill the head vampire with it, and you're like, wow, that's the one badass scene that Bella ever got in this. It's kind of like that, because Anna actually says, and I wrote down the quote here, because it's actually a really good one, I am Anna Arden, and I will have my soul back, and I just, I remember reading that, thinking, wow, that is legitimately a badass scene. All right, you know what, Anna? You're a horrible bitch throughout the majority of this series, but I will give credit where it's due. That was a really cool badass scene. So she gets her soul back, puts it back in her body, then she manages to go find Matias in his dragon form, and she just sort of calms him down, which is kind of dumb, but whatever. And then Gabor gathers up a bunch of soldiers, and using his bind controlling magic is able to sort of rally them, and then they get Bahadir to lead them, and again, he's such a minor character, and they really only mention once that, hey, he's good at strategy, but they never actually show him doing it. So, again, this part is kind of dumb and falls flat, but eh, that, whatever. So after that, they actually go and fight the leaders of the Preytheria, and Anna actually defeats Vasilisa slash Baba Yaga by actually taking away her ability to use magic. Like, apparently she, like, severs her connection or something, I don't know. It's not that well explained, but it does kind of make sense given the way magic has been explained in the rest of this book. And honestly, that is also a pretty cool scene. So I'll give the books this. The climax, the final battle is honestly pretty good. It had no right to be as good as it was, but by just putting in a couple of decent moments with Anna who I'd want to reiterate is awful as a character. She's an awful protagonist, but by just putting in a couple of really cool moments in there, it actually made the climax pretty good. Like, it's not mind-blowing. Like, it's no it's not going to compare to something like Mistborn or just it's not amazing, but it does have some level of competence to it. And so after the climax peace comes. You know, the war is over, Hungary gains its independence, Austria becomes a Republic I think. Like, they have a brief conversation between Anna and Franz Joseph where he mentions he's no longer Emperor and how they're setting up a Parliament now, but from what I understand about the real Franz Joseph, he was a pretty staunch believer in divine right of kings, and he wasn't happy about having Parliaments and stuff, so he seems way too chill about it, and also like, was there really the political will to turn Austria into a Republic? It makes sense that Joseph would just stay Emperor, whatever. It's kind of dumb, but okay, whatever, it's not a big deal. And then Anna and Gabor officially get engaged, and well, that's kind of it. You know, it just ends with you know what, peace has come, let's try and rebuild, let's make a better world, which is pretty generic, but also competent. And that's what I want to say about this last book overall. Like, it has some actual competence to it. The first two books did not have any. Okay, the first two books were awful in just about every way. This one, while it is still awful in most ways, has a couple of bits that are done alright, and I kind of wish I could have seen those bits done in a better book. Like, again, if everything leading up to the climax had actually been let's just say they had just been okay, or average, then the climax itself probably would have seemed a lot better. But by having everything leading up to it just be terrible, it, I mean it falls, I don't want to say it falls flat because it is still a decent climax, I think, but I just feel like it could have been so much better. And let me leave you with this. A couple of competent bits do not make up for all of the shit that came before this, but I will give credit where it's due. And so while this is still probably the worst book series I've ever read, I think that the author could become better one day. So just, tell her to keep working at it. Thanks again to Des Brennan and all of my patrons and be sure to subscribe and all that other stuff.