Winterfall by Lauren Rivers

Topics: Dystopia, Action, Survival, Family, Fatherhood

Genre: Scifi, Thriller

Age Rating: PG-13 for some violence

Available in Print and eBook

You may like this book if you enjoy:

• Action movie-style plots

• Fathers protecting their family

• Easygoing writing styles

• The movie Snowpiercer

• Trains!

Review summary:

Action-packed and with a lot of heart, Winterfall is like a great Hollywood movie. Its frozen world feels huge, dangerous, and full of secrets, but its people are tenacious in their struggle to survive. Above all, seeing a father fight to protect his family, with every odd stacked against them, is extremely touching. While the book has the characteristics of self-published indie fiction (mostly formatting issues), I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to more stories in this universe.

Full review:

I was already familiar with the Winterfall universe when I started reading this book. Several Winterfall short stories have been featured on The Voice of Dog podcast, of which I'm an avid listener, so I was excited to see a whole novel come out in this universe. After all, the short stories are always a VOD highlight for me whenever they come around. It isn't required before reading this book, but be sure to check those out at some point if you haven't yet.

Winterfall takes place in a future in which the earth's temperature has plummeted due to an event known by the very straightforward name 'The Freeze.' Only one city supposedly survived: Coldhaven. The circular city is built on top of a massive source of coal, and around a huge furnace that funnels heat to all its buildings. It's in this city that we find Joe, one of the engineers responsible for keeping that massive heating system working. The polar bear has a wife and two kids--a family that's still able to hold a lot of love between them despite the cruel world outside their home.

But Joe's daughter, Emily, is chronically ill, and the last of the rare medicine that keeps her alive is running out. To find more, Joe volunteers to join a scavenging team and venture out beyond the city's walls, where he's heard of an ancient battleship that may have the medicine needed to save his daughter's life.

It sounds like a pretty straightforward plot that will take up the whole book, right? Nah, that's only like the first third. As a corrupt government gets involved, along with suggestions of there being something more out in that frozen wasteland, the story starts to branch out. Part of the fun of this book is that it doesn't stay in one place for too long. It's active, shifting gears and upping the stakes several times throughout the story, which makes for a thrilling page turner that keeps you glued. I love how the story escalates at a steady pace for the full duration of the book, with the stakes ramping up more and more with each passing chapter.

The action also escalates a lot over time, from simple fight scenes to explosive battles (with more fight scenes) as the book goes on. I was impressed by how vividly I imagined some of these action scenes. If this were a movie, critics might call some of them "visually stunning," amidst the backdrop of this frozen post-apocalyptic world. Even now as I write this review I'm thinking back to some of the great visuals I had in my head while reading the story's climax. I love it when a book can leave an impression like that.

The story isn't high octane all the way through, of course. One of the book's best features is how it balances the action with its quieter scenes. I appreciated the balance of adrenaline-pumping moments and quiet contemplative scenes here. The ebb and flow of these helped make the story feel consistent and well-structured. While I think Winterfall feels like a Hollywood movie, it's able to sit with its characters and bask in quiet moments to a degree only books really allow for. Winterfall plays well to that advantage books have over movies in the action genre.

Most of these quieter moments focus on Joe's family, whose strong familial bonds serve as a wonderful beacon of love and hope in a world with very little of those precious resources left. The Kennedys are the heart of this book. They're a nuclear family (father, mother, son, daughter) that never gives in to despair. Each member is ready to do whatever it takes to protect the others, and their complete lack of hesitation to overcome seemingly unbeatable obstacles for each other makes them incredibly endearing. Seeing them struggle to get to safety kept me glued to the story just as much as the action.

Now because I think Winterfall is well worth readers' time, it worries me that the book has a lot of formatting issues. These may result in a bad first impression that causes readers to pass on the book. The text is left-aligned with a jagged edge (the standard is left-aligned justification). There are also spaces between each paragraph, and the text leading can be inconsistent. The margins are a bit too large as well. Add in a few typos, and the layout of the book unfortunately feels a bit unprofessional. Not to mention that the formatting results in a far larger page count than necessary. Luckily this is not a flaw with the story itself. Just keep in mind not to disregard the story for its formatting issues if you do pick it up. I hope it's something that's corrected for future editions.

Altogether, I found Winterfall very refreshing. I've personally been reading a lot of more low-action, contemplative books lately, so it was nice to spike my adrenaline with a thrilling story that goes down smooth. I can't wait to see what else Lauren Rivers has in store for this universe, as I think it sets up a lot of potential for future stories.