by Jenna Burtenshaw
Kate Winters isn’t who she thinks she is. Burned out of her family bookstore by a suspicious fire, she will be pursued across a country riddled by fear and war before she discovers the extent of her skill and her destiny. Her pursuers include Silas Dane—one of the most compelling villains since Rowling’s Professor Snape and Pullman’s Mrs. Coulter—and Edgar, a young man who worked at the bookshop and who seems to know much more about the secrets of Wintercraft (a mysterious book that has been in Kate’s family for generations; a book responsible for the disappearance of her parents years ago) than he lets on.
There really is something special about Kate. What exactly is so special and what will she do with it? Kate meets next to no one who has any good intentions in this book. It is full of bad decisions and wrong turns. Though you can't really blame her. She is trying to do the best with what is given her. And as the book unfolds it seems she has only one dead end after another.
Oh my goodness! Please, let me take this train ride all over again. Seriously a masterful book. The book was just as spectacularly breathtaking as the cover.
Kate is a great character. She starts of completely ignorant of the world she is thrust into. But she quickly learns to take responsibility and always attempt to improve her situation. She doesn't back down or give up like so many other females litter across fiction these days. Edgar isn't all he is cracked up to be. Or at least I saw very little of what was hinted about him coming to pass. Perhaps, future books will delve into that possibility. Silas was surprisingly my favorite character in this book. I loathed him with every fiber of my being when he was introduced. And he didn't change my mind with each successively horrible thing he did. He was selfish and was willing to destroy everything in his path. No life is precious to him only death. But there in the end of the book there was such a depth to his character it was hard not to like him. He didn't do anything that would really earn a good opinion. But I want to see what will happen to him.
