Review: The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski (Spoiler-Alert)

I haven't read a series with such ease since high school Vampire Academy.

Of course, The Winner's Trilogy is nothing like Vampire Academy in plot or tone, but it does manage to be expertly revised with no filler. The writing style is is so fast-paced, that even though there is little to no action in this series, I find myself easily reading 200 pages at a time without realizing.

And despite the simple language, I am thoroughly impressed by the depth of themes in these books, especially in the young adult fantasy space. Anti-war sentiments were often covered by 2010s dystopian stories, but I feel like fantasy was a genre where escapism was prioritized over ethical questions (again, within YA). Bounty hunters and assassins were all the rage, but this series truly does something different.

The protagonist, Kestrel's, arc revolves around the dissonance she feels between her natural principles and the principles of her society. And this is not a comfortable nor neat conflict.

She loves her father, but he is a war general. Her position in this installment causes her to have to participate in military strategy, despite her moral opposition. She cannot abstain from this completely or she risks putting even more lives on the line. So she must provide advice that will kill smaller numbers of people, instead of letting herself be killed and letting the generals wreak maximum havoc without her influencing them away from that.

She must pretend to have betrayed Arin, to whom she has an undeniable pull, wounding him over and over again. Every time he realizes that she must have been forced into this position, she must convince him otherwise. IT'S SO HEARTBREAKING.

And Arin must make these ethical sacrifices as well. In order to escape imprisonment and to help his colonized land, he invents the gun. It is his only way out, the only way to help his oppressed people. But in creating this weapon, he's done irreversible damage.

I'm so nervous to read the final book in the trilogy, because this one was heavy. I'm rooting for the romance so bad, but I actually can't conceive of how it would work out happily. Can they just sail off to a remote island together somewhere?? I'm so stressed. But I can't wait.