The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski Book Review

Book two of the dazzling Winner's Trilogy is a fight to the death as Kestrel risks betrayal of country for love.

The engagement of Lady Kestrel to Valoria’s crown prince means one celebration after another. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement... if she could only trust him. Yet can she even trust herself? For—unknown to Arin—Kestrel is becoming a skilled practitioner of deceit: an anonymous spy passing information to Herran, and close to uncovering a shocking secret.

As Arin enlists dangerous allies in the struggle to keep his country’s freedom, he can’t fight the suspicion that Kestrel knows more than she shows. In the end, it might not be a dagger in the dark that cuts him open, but the truth. And when that happens, Kestrel and Arin learn just how much their crimes will cost them.

I was kindly provided an ARC by the publisher in exchange of an honest review. 

TheWinner’s Crime is the new novel by author Marie Rutkosky, and the sequel to the acclaimed book The Winner’s Curse. In this fairly interesting story of political games, war, love and betrayal the author uses rich vocabulary in beautiful prose. If well the writing style is lovely, the story is fairly simple and excessively long for its plot.  

As I’ve said, this novel is part of a trilogy, and I recommend reading the first book if you want to see how the relationship between Kestrel and Arin developed. However, you can easily read The Winner’s Crime and understand it, even if you have not read the first book. Everything is well explained and there are constant references to the events occurred on The Winner’s Curse that are well explained, which I thought was nice and well done.

The story begins after Kestrel’s engagement to the emperor’s son, a decision she made to free the Herrani and her beloved, and former slave, Arin.

I will admit that, with the hype this series was getting I thought of two possibilities for this book:

1.       That it would be a typical love story, boring and clichéd.

2.       That it would be an interesting and captivating novel with well-formed characters, an intriguing plot and some fun political game.

In the end, it was both and neither. Don’t get me wrong, this was a decent book but it simply dragged on for too long.

One of the greatest problems with The Winner’s Crime is that nothing really happens up until 70% of the story. Before that we see Kestrel attending parties and being part of the gossips and funs of the high class society while she balances that with her desire to see Arin again and to save Herran from any more trouble. Arin is struggling with his new position as governor of Herran, especially now that after the liberation the Emperor has set high taxes they cannot afford and his reluctance to see Kestrel again at her engagement party, an honor that Arin as the new governor of Herran must fulfill.

I was excited with Kestrel for the first few pages. She seemed smart, resourceful and cunning. It appeared she could play the game and quite well in fact.

“No? You urged me to put an end to the Herrani rebellion by giving that territory self-governance under my law. You argued that this would free up troops and money to fuel my eastern war, and lo”- He flourished a hand- “It did. What clever advice from one so young.”

I liked her relationship with the Emperor, how he saw himself on her and wanted to teach her to be the ruler his son could never be. And how Kestrel was unsure if she wanted to be someone like him. Someone who ignored and belittled his son but who wasn’t sure whether it was inevitable. After all she already saw things in her that resembled him and she was unsure whether it was by choice or whether he was playing the strings.

“She could have asked why he had summoned her to dinner, and where the prince might be, but Kestrel had seen how the emperor loved to shape silence into a tool that pried open the anxiety of others.”

The Emperor is aware, of course, of the time she spent as Arin’s prisoner and of the, let’s say, “fondness” she had for him before the rebellion. It would be natural to assume that her stay there was not entirely against her will and he even admits that it doesn’t matter if she slept with him or developed a relationship with him. After all it was her who sent the army there and who solved the problem of the rebellion war. The Emperor then tells her that most people at court will assume the same and, if they think she shared his bed, they would believe it was “for the right reasons”. The legend of Jadis was one of my favorite parts of the book, so I won’t spoil it.

The first few pages, yes, Kestrel was all of this and more. I had my hopes high on her but when Arin comes again into her life it all goes to hell. Kestrel wants Arin but she believes that if she were to tell him of the deal she made with the emperor to free him and his people, Arin’s honor would get in the way and he would persuade her to run away with him. Or, at least he could do something really foolish to angry the Emperor, which he did the second he saw her. Sigh.

So she tries to act cold and uninterested but it really does not work when she changes her mind at every moment; Kestrel could be succeeding in pushing him away but then she would feel sorry and try and convince him that she still cared for her. Lady, it’s one or the other. I wished you would stick with a choice and go through with it.

Finally, he said, “I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I know,” He muttered.

At first it was understandable, this reluctance to speak to him because it could put him in danger but at the same time wanting him near. Eventually however, it became annoying and down-right dumb. If they had just sat down and talked (which they actually did but it was more of the same) none of this would have happened and the book would have ended at thirty pages. But nooo, we needed the unnecessary angst, apparently.

“Arin, it wasn’t me.”

Literally seconds later:

“I could have arranged for it. That’s my dagger. That’s my seal. Why do you believe what I say? Why do you believe me at all?” “Don’t joke. You should blame. You must.”

“Kestrel, why are you trying to convince me of your guilt? … A moment ago, you insisted you had nothing to do with this,”

Arin, it was difficult at first, because he had been a slave, invisible and feeling worthless during most of his life. It was understandable that he did not want to give up on the first person that had shown him kindness and love. This soon became a problem, especially because he was risking not only his life but Herrani’s and Kestrel’s life as well just to see Kestrel again and convince himself that there was something going on, that he had not imagined everything between them. But he never stopped to think, “Hey, maybe there is a reason why she is acting this way and maybe it has something to do with the freaking Emperor who hates Herrani people.” But he never did, only moped because she had changed/he had never really known her.

It was this back and forth, back and forth between she cares for me and she hates me.

I was not fond of how this things usually resolved themselves, how the characters could discover the entire story by simply assuming things about one another just to make the plot move forward because they didn’t realize it forty pages before. At first I could let it slip but doing that more than three times was an abuse, it was impossible either of them could discover such intricate plans randomly. It became funny after a while, “Of course you could unravel a secret plan of such magnitude when you crave for her lips!”

To me surprise I ended up liking Verren, Kestrel’s fiancé and the Emperor’s son. At first he seemed like the typical hot-headed spoiled brat but once we get to know him we can appreciate him better and discover that he, in fact has the mind his father thought Kestrel had.

In the end Kestrel was rather dumb, doing foolish things that would anger the Emperor because “She does not fear him” yet when he confronts her she is terrified and tries to lie to him, lie when she knew there had been witnesses.

The plot was the mystery of what was the emperor really planning and for which Kestrel became a spy to Tensen, Herran’s Minister of Agriculture, passing off as a maid to gather information without being discovered. This was mostly what kept me going, I wanted to know what the heck was going on and who was behind what but, unfortunately, the end wasn’t all that shocking and definitely not worth all that waiting. It was rather simple and, once finished, I wondered why didn’t Kestrel/Arin/Tensen thought about it before.

 The Winner’s Crime wasn’t a terrible book, there was no Insta-love, love triangles or girl/girl hate. It did suffer from the “Second book Syndrome” since it was clearly setting up things for the third book. Overall a regular book in which could have been avoided if people talked instead of doing dumb things. Do I want to know what happens next? Yes but if it’s more of the same I rather read a spoiled review and don’t waste my time.