Rebel Wars - 2018 Awards [CLOSED]

ACTION/ADVENTURE WINNER || Winter's Edge Review

Winter's Edge

By Cephyr13

Chapters Prologue-4

Review by djhowty

Review

This was an intense and entertaining book from the prologue through chapter 4! Each chapter seamlessly built upon the next, adding mystery after mystery...and slight revelations to Ian's abilities.

I really enjoyed that each chapter (and prologue) had a definitive arc and ended with a riveting hook that encouraged me to read on—without being an annoying cliffhanger. Even though Winter's Edge began with a bang and kept up with the energy and excitement, I do like that chapter 1 gave a glimpse of Ian's home-life, his life at school, his friend, and his hopelessness with girls, and that his fear of his powers escaping and ruining things were at the core of his thoughts the entire time. It was fraught and sad at the same time, particularly Ian's relationship with his father, the fact that his sister was sent away (and he was not), and that his one good relationship was with his mother.

Throughout the chapters I read, Ian's voice shone through clearly. He is a complicated character, at once funny and down-trod and fearful, yet he always seems to be optimistic and fairly flexible. While I would have liked to see a little more interaction with Mandy other than the rote "I'm finally dating you and now I must suddenly and mysteriously leave town," I did like that he at least plucked up his courage to ask a girl out, even if he didn't quite understand why she liked him (I felt like there should have been a little more to that too, honestly).

I would have also liked to see him think through his leaving a little more. He determines, "Oh no, the bad guys are here and after me, I must leave," but we never see more than that. No thinking of where he can go, where will be safe, what money he'll use, and how he'll survive. He just has to leave. While I understand that he's a teenager and young, when I was his age I was desperate to leave home as well, but the thought of where to go and how to get money/apartment/transportation was so much in my thoughts that it very nearly paralyzed me. With someone who's had his devastating powers and an awful, emotionally abusive parent in his life, I'd think that Ian would have thought about leaving before and would have a plan worked out.

As for the other secondary characters, I don't have much to comment on since it doesn't seem like they'll feature too heavily (beyond Scarface, Abby and her mom, perhaps?) after Ian left home and wound up in the mystery place. The one thing I'll mention is Ian's dad. While he's a jerk and an asshole for a good, if douchey, reason (fear), he felt fairly one-dimensional. And I think it's because in the few scenes he's in, the man is reduced down to his eyes. He's always gazing, staring, peering, etc., before he acts. I noticed it in the prologue so much that I went back to count, and Ian's dad does something with his eyes seven times in that short amount of time. He continues eyeballing things throughout the rest of the story.

This is a super, super minor detail, however. The rest of the story is so clean, well-written and grammatically flawless that I was swept in right from the bat. The descriptions of Ian's powers were phenomenal and engaging, and there was imagery that was particularly poetic. For example: "Particles of dust danced through beams of light streaming from the window behind my dad, so free, yet so insignificant—just like me."

Overall, I can definitely see why this won first place in Rebel Wars! It's absolutely awesome. While I stopped just before it got into depth with the Ancient Hebrews, archeology and more of the mystery of the powers, if the rest of the story is anything like the first couple chapters, it's amazing.