Rating: ★★★★
Audience: Fantasy Romance
Length: 464 pages
Author: H.M. Long
Publisher: Titan Books
Release Date: July 11th, 2023
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

A stormsinger and pirate hunter join forces against a deathless pirate lord in this swashbuckling Jacobean adventure on the high-seas.

Launching the Winter Sea series, full of magic, betrayal, redemption and fearsome women, for readers of Adrienne Young, R. J. Barker and Naomi Novik.

Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: a woman whose voice can still hurricanes and shatter armadas. Faced with servitude to pirate lord Silvanus Lirr, Mary offers her skills to his arch-rival in exchange for protection – and, more importantly, his help sending Lirr to a watery grave. But her new ally has a vendetta of his own, and Mary’s dreams are dark and full of ghistings, spectral creatures who inhabit the ancient forests of her homeland and the figureheads of ships.

Samuel Rosser is a disgraced naval officer serving aboard The Hart, an infamous privateer commissioned to bring Lirr to justice. He will stop at nothing to capture Lirr, restore his good name and reclaim the only thing that stands between himself and madness: a talisman stolen by Mary.

Finally, driven into the eternal ice at the limits of their world, Mary and Samuel must choose their loyalties and battle forces older and more powerful than the pirates who would make them slaves.

Come sail the Winter Sea, for action-packed, high-stakes adventures, rich characterisation and epic plots full of intrigue and betrayal.

Thank you to RB Media and Titan Books for the ALC.

SAVED BY THE SECOND HALF.

Audiobook review: LOVED. I loved the narrators. They kept this book going for me. I loved that this was dual POV. Great audio read!

For the first half of this book I wasn’t quite sure where things were going. There was a lot of chasing Mary around as she was captured back and forth between pirates. Not a lot going on at the moment. Fortunately the second half picked up the pacing in a multitude of ways and now I’m curious where book two will lead.

I liked our two main characters, Mary and Samuel. They are both on different sides of the current conflict and slowly find out that they might actually be allies (and that there might be a romance in the future??).

What really kept me going was the vibes. If you’re looking for a high seas, pirate filled book, this will give you that. I thought the magic system was interesting and there were just enough twists in the second half that had me going, well what happens next.

Overall audience notes:

• Fantasy
• Language: light
• Romance: kiss
• Violence: moderate
• Trigger/Content Warnings: attempted murder, kidnapping, brief sexual assault (unwanted kissing and touching over clothes), near death experiences

Instagram || Goodreads || The StoryGraph