I’ve been powering through books this month. Like seriously I need to slow down–I can’t keep up with myself. After Peter Pan, I started The Winner’s Trilogy by Marie Rutkoski. The first book is The Winner’s Curse.
Seventeen-year-old Kestrel is the general’s daughter in a vast empire that is constantly waging war on other countries and enslaving the conquered people. Like all teenagers in the empire, Kestrel must soon choose between marriage or enlisting in the military herself, but Kestrel isn’t really interested in either. She just wants to play the piano, but only slaves are allowed to be musicians. Then Kestrel buys a young slave named Arin, and everything turns upside down. As Kestrel and Arin become friends, we switch between Kestrel’s and Arin’s points of view. Kestrel is navigating the world of high society, and doing so very well. She’s very clever, good at strategizing, and politically savvy. But she’s also falling in love with Arin, and maybe Arin is falling in love with her, even though Kestrel’s obvious preference for him is stirring vicious rumors, and Arin is working as a spy for the slave rebellion planning to overthrow the empire and reclaim their conquered home.
I really loved this book. The plot was intricate, and the characters were so well-done. I loved watching Kestrel and Arin become close and all the complications that created. I also loved how Arin forced Kestrel to see the truth of the empire but how Kestrel forced Arin to see that people like her were in fact people and not all monsters.
The thing I didn’t like about this book is that it really seemed to gloss over the horrors of slavery. Beatings are mentioned, and it’s implied that Arin’s sister was raped by the conquering army ten years ago, but these things are just mentioned or implied. We don’t see the horrors of slavery. Just as bad, there’s a history in our world of masters sexually exploiting slaves, and this book comes close to that, because Kestrel and Arin are falling in love, without really going into how problematic that is, not even within this world where Kestrel will have to either enlist in the army or marry someone else and a real relationship between her and Arin can never be a thing. That the master in this scenario is the woman and the slave is the man doesn’t make it less problematic. I will say that the second book deals with the slavery issue a lot more and sort of makes the first book better on this front, but it’s important to acknowledge that this is a problem with this book.
On the whole, I really enjoyed this book. I particularly loved the last third-ish. And the ending is perfect both to round off this story but also to set up for the sequel.