One More For the Road!
He'll be makin' like a bee line, headin' for the border line, goin' for broke / Sayin' one more hit ought to do it / This joint ain't nothin' to it / One more for the road / Lido / Whoah oh oh oh / He's for the money, he's for the show / Lido's waitin' for the go, Lido....
Ahem. I mean.
The Winter Road by Adrian Selby!
Yes, that was a Boz Scaggs reference. No, I’m not that old. I am a millennial, damn it! I’m from the 90s! I swear! God I am old. Anyway, I’m not just here to make Lido Shuffle references. I’m here to review The Winter Road.
Do you like dark gritty fantasies starring badass female protagonists centered around infrastructure? If you do then, well, you’ll definitely want to give The Winter Road a go. So Teyr Amondsen, our protagonist, is an ex-mercernary turned wealthy businesswoman in this weird viking world that seems like a cross between North-of-the-Wall Game of Thrones and Mad Max: Fury Road, with Teyr as Furiosa (buzz cut and all). Anyway, warriors in this world fight by taking these things called “fightbrews” which are basically a shitton of drugs. Well, plants, but plants that are super druggy. Anyway, Teyr’s great ambition is to build a road and a trading route through an area called The Circle in order to bring riches to everyone along the way. Teyr sets out with a caravan of mercenaries and merchants in order to make this road, bringing her “keep” (spouse), Aude and her stepson, Mosa with her.
Nothing like building a road in winter!
Only thing is, the situation in The Circle isn’t all that great. There’s this warlord called Khiese who is slowly gaining more territory with the help of his fanatical followers, called Whiteboys because they paint themselves white. Khiese is slowly forcing the clans of the Circle to take up his banner, and he doesn’t like the idea of Teyr or her road. He wants her the fuck out of the circle. Teyr, being the ambitious sort, refuses.
As you can imagine, things do not go well.
So on paper, The Winter Road sounds like something I’d love to read: dark fantasy! Badass female protagonist! Trade policies! Literal road-building! I’ve also talked a lot about my admiration for sci-fi and fantasy that follows the “deep end of the pool” philosophy of storytelling: just throw your reader right into the world and expect them to keep up. Well, The Winter Road does this, but it does not do it particularly right - there aren’t enough context clues to get you through what everything is at first and rather than swimming out of the deep end, it feels a bit more like you’re drowning. Often, while reading the book, it felt as though I’d come into the second or third book of a series that I hadn’t even read, and that I was missing something. Some fundamental backstory that I would’ve gotten if I’d read the first and second books...only The Winter Road is a standalone book.
The other major problem that I had with the book was that I just...didn’t care. About the characters, the world, the setting, the road, any of it. It’s the sort of story that expects you to catch on to everything quickly, and rather than catching on and rolling with it, my brain just checked out. More than once I fell asleep reading this book on the train. This isn’t really a fair criticism, as I am up every morning at 4 am and just sitting still for more than five minutes will cause me to fall asleep, but if a book can manage to keep me awake during my weekday afternoon commute, it’s really something.
So. The Winter Road. It was not my cup of tea. That does not mean it won’t be your cup of tea - I’m just an idiot with a tumblr account, you don’t have to take my word as gospel. You might pick up this book and find it amazing. Only one way to find out, though.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Fans of very dark, immersive fantasy stories where warriors do a whole bunch of drugs before a fight.
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone looking to stay awake during their afternoon train commute.
RATING: 2/5
RELEASE DATE: November 13, 2018
LIDO SHUFFLE: