That I was eager for her to win despite everything shows really impressive characterisation as I don't have much patience for characters who make consistently awful choices from bad morals. Somehow, the fact that she was clearly making terrible choices (from bad options) didn't irritate me, but I was rooting for her to get what she wanted so she could turn her situation around. It's so twisty, and I loved how awful the choices Ekata made were. Pretty much everyone is an antagonist, from the outright villain Sigis (who's awful), to the ministers who want power but it's hard to work out who is actively planning Ekata's death.

I was swept away into a world where an unprepared woman is thrust into power, with only her father's bad example to follow and the knowledge that everyone is using her. This political fantasy is utterly stunning. And if Ekata is to survive, she must quickly decide how she will wield them both. If Kylma Above is to survive, Ekata must seize her family’s magic and power. Nothing has prepared Ekata for diplomacy, for war, for love.or for a crown she has never wanted. In the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother’s captivating warrior bride, and ever-encroaching challengers from without-and within-her ministry. But just as escape is within reach, her parents and twelve siblings fall under a strange sleeping sickness, and no one can find a cure. Not her books or her experiments, not her family’s icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. Once Ekata’s brother is finally named heir to the dukedom of Kylma Above, there will be nothing to keep her at home with her murderous family.

SHE SURVIVED THE CURSE. NOW SHE MUST SURVIVE THE THRONE.Īll Ekata wants is to stay alive-and the chance to prove herself as a scholar.

The winter duke