The Winner’s Kiss (Winner’s #3)

Some kisses come at a price.

War has begun. Arin is in the thick of it with untrustworthy new allies and the empire as his enemy. Though he has convinced himself that he no longer loves Kestrel, Arin hasn’t forgotten her, or how she became exactly the kind of person he has always despised. She cared more for the empire than she did for the lives of innocent people—and certainly more than she did for him.

At least, that’s what he thinks.

In the frozen north, Kestrel is a prisoner in a brutal work camp. As she searches desperately for a way to escape, she wishes Arin could know what she sacrificed for him. She wishes she could make the empire pay for what they’ve done to her.

But no one gets what they want just by wishing.

As the war intensifies, both Kestrel and Arin discover that the world is changing. The East is pitted against the West, and they are caught in between. With so much to lose, can anybody really win?

Guys guys guys, this IS IT. The end of the greatest series I’ve read all year!!!

Wait… What do you mean it won’t live up to hype? Surely no, it’s got to be as perfect as the rest! Surely after such a good series, they wouldn’t just throw in the worst plot point ever and let down the trilogy like almost every other YA trilogy does…

Oh, wait, nope, that’s exactly what they did!

What’s the terrible plot point, you ask? Well, after traumatic events at the end of book 2, and various druggings and torture in the aftermath of that, Kestrel loses her memory. Not terrible, I was really loving it in the beginning. Mental illness in a book is a bit of a weakness of mine, so when it happened to one of my favs I was so ready for a great book. Every chapter that was in her head was so amazing, I found myself looking forward to it more and more every time. The problem? Well, with memory loss comes… a lack of memory. Shocking, I know. What this means, though, is that a lot of your personality is gone. You can’t respond to stuff properly, because you don’t know the background to what you’re responding to. Here’s a handy list of things you are NOT mentally capable of making a response to;

a) Your father’s life or death
b) Military tactics based off what you think your said father is going to do
c) Your so-called love for anyone (namely Arin)

And what should the said loved one not take advantage of?

a) Kestrel thinking she can make a decision on her father’s life or death
b) Military tactics based off what you think your said father is going to do
c) Your love, and more importantly physical attraction to you, the loved one

And what do Kestrel and Arin do? Yep, all of those things! The romance in this book heats up about 100 levels from the last two books, and a lot of that is because Kestrel has forgotten all the reasons her and Arin couldn’t be together. Of course I knew they were going to get together. It was building up from the beginning of book 1, and I was so ready for all of my dreams to be realised. With a build up like that, though, you can’t just throw it all away! They ruined it for this torture-based plot point, and I am oh so disappointed.

The rest of the book, though, was what I wanted. The battle scenes were spectacularly done, Roshar is one of my new best friends, the final scene with the emporor was everything I could have hoped and dreamed for. There was just a niggling reminder through it all that what I was reading was fake… Everything Kestrel did was based off the character Arin created for her, and everyone knows that no one sees every part of yourself. I didn’t hate this book, far from it. I just really wanted to love it, and that was unfortunately impossible.

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