Alex Callister

After having such a good time reading 'Winter Dark', the first book in the series, I couldn't imagine how Alex Callister could come up with a sequel that would have the same impact. Fortunately, Alex Callister didn't have the same problem. This episode was as action-packed and fast-paced as the first book and managed to have almost as many surprises.

I liked the fact that Winter doesn't remain static in this book. She is forced to accept some responsibilities for her actions in the first book and recognise that there are consequences to 'over-estimating her own capabilities and taking recklessly impulsive actions'. That doesn't mean she'll stop, just that she'll deal with the fallout later.

In this book, Winter has been promoted to GCHQ Head of Field, which feels almost like a punishment for having gone rogue in the previous book. There's some nicely judged humour in watching Winter squirm under, abuse and ultimately evade her responsibilities, especially when this involves conflict with the new head of HR or with the therapist who has to sign-off Winter's readiness to return to active duty.

The plot is powered by the emergence of a new and very unpleasant baddy, known as The Guardsman, who is leaving messages for Winter carved into the bodies of his victims. Winter's boss is uninterested in The Guardsman and sees the victims as acceptable collateral damage. He wants Winter focused on catching the man she exposed as the head of Firestorm in the previous book, something Winter has no interest in.

Of course, Winter doesn't do what she's told, Of course, she drops back into her Snow White Russian assassin persona and goes rogue. Of course, everything turns out to be much more complicated and dangerous than she'd anticipated.

The body count is high. The action is fast-paced. The baddy is a horrible mixture of vicious and competent but what really keeps the book moving is that Winter can't quite be the Snow White she was last time. This time she has more people that she has to keep safe, more responsibility that she has to carry and a very personal hatred of The Guardsman.

The ending is spectacular and has more than a couple of twists that I didn't expect. It left me sated and happy and looking forward to the next Winter book.

Like the first book, 'Winter Rising' was written to be an audiobook and Ell Potter's narration makes it a listening experience not to be missed.… (mehr)

I underestimated 'Winter Dark' from the very beginning (which is amusing given that people constantly underestimate the main character, Winter, and she always makes them regret it). I almost passed on the book because of all the hype. Amazon/Audible named it 'Thriller Of The Year' almost as soon as It was published in March 2019 but, by the end of the year, the hype had morphed into strong word of mouth and I added 'Winter Dark' to my TBR pile. I only realised how long it had been languishing there when I saw that the fourth book in the series is due for publication in July.

When I started the book I got swept along in its adrenaline-soaked path. The opening took the traditional techno-thriller/spy tropes and gleefully twisted them until they screamed. I watched teenage Winter being recruited/press-ganged into the operational arm of GCHQ because she's a weird mixture of extreme sports adrenalin junkie and world-class hacker and I thought, 'Eat your heart out, Alex Rider'.

My inner pendant woke up and said 'There is no operational arm of GCHQ' and I sneered at him and said, 'Try to keep up. This is Alex Callister's way of letting you know this is fiction, an entertainment, not a documentary'. Then we skipped forward ten years and I saw the devilishly cunning, highly plausible and completely criminal uses that Alex Callister had thought up for blockchain technology and the Dark Web, and I thought to myself, 'What if it's a double bluff and GCHQ pushes its plugged-in data-nerd image because it conceals its operational capabilities?' and I knew my head was being messed with.

Even as I smiled at the action scene in the Alps (Winter's a spy, of course there was an Alpine action scene and of course Winter was going to snowboard down a Black Run in the dark and blow up a helicopter), I realised that every time Winter went to anywhere in Europe that I know well, the descriptions of the places were spot on.

Foolishly perhaps, by the time I was about forty per cent into 'Winter Dark', I thought I had it pegged. Here's how I described it:

"This is playful, clever and cheeky. it has an almost tongue-in-cheek style of storytelling, wrapped around a lethal high-functioning sociopath heroine, skilled in hacking, martial arts and snowboarding, who is more libidinous than Bond and with much wider-ranging tastes. Its strong plot, plausible technology and realistic descriptions of places around Europe keep the book from becoming an Austin Powers meringue."

All of that is true but as the book progressed and I came to know Winter better and to understand the situation she was in the middle of, everything got darker and more intense. I kept thinking I had everything figured out, and I kept being caught by surprise as the plot twisted and turned and with every turn, it got better. I couldn't have guessed at the ending but I once I knew what it was, I realised it worked perfectly. It was satisfying and all the things from earlier in the book that I'd tagged as 'Yeah, like that's gonna happen' turned out to have cunning explanations.

But it's not the plot or the international settings that make the book into an exceptional read. It's Winter, in all her disturbing glory. She is a great character, as much a villain as a hero. She's as dangerous and as ruthless as the people she hunts. She could easily be one of them and, if she was, she'd rule them all.

I've seen reviews that tag Winter as a female Bond. I've never read the Fleming books so I can only go by the movies but I don't see Winter as Bond. She's not Establishment in the way that Bond is, quite the opposite, she's the Establishment's worst nightmare. Her sexual appetites are as strong as Bond's and more wide-ranging than his but she's a lot less predatory. She's not as entitled as Bond. She seems to be brighter and much more dangerous and, unlike Bond, she's not playing the global domination game, she's out to stop whoever it is that is killing children slowly and screening it live on the Internet.

Just as Winter is not Bond, her enemies are not the megalomaniacal narcissists of Spectre. They're smarter, more ruthless and more focused than that. The main baddy and Winter are cut from the same cloth and they both know it.

By the end of the book, I knew that 'Winter Dark' was not the tongue-in-cheek entertainment I'd thought it would be. It's filled with violence and sex and acts of cruelty which are neither decorative nor exploitative but are disturbingly realistic.

I can see now that 'Winter Dark' probably was the best thriller of 2019 and I stupidly let it sit on my shelf for two years. The good news is that the next three books are available to me now and I can see what Winter does next.

'Winter Dark' was conceived as an audiobook from the start (there was no paperback or kindle version until nine months later) and it's perfect for listening to, not least because of Ell Potter's astonishingly powerful narration. I strongly recommend that you let Ell Potter tell you Winter's story. Click on the SoundCloud link below and you'll get a taste of what i'm talking about.
… (mehr)

If you enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you are going to absolutely love this book. From that start, you're drawn in and on the edge of your seat. Callister is a master at building suspense, and weaving in twists you'll never see coming. I was reluctant to put this down once I started, and loved Winter's attitude. She's strong, smart, skilled, and is completely no-nonsense. A unique heroine who will capture your heart while making it race. I cannot recommend this book enough, as it truly lives up to the promises made in the blurb.… (mehr)

Winter Rising by Alex Callister
The Winter Series #2

On the edge of my seat from beginning to end! This story grabbed my attention and held it from beginning to end. Winter is a superb main character that I am eager to read more about as soon as the next book is ready!

What I liked:
* Winter: smart, brave, exceptional in all that she does, able to hold her own in a fight and almost anywhere else. She is a woman to admire, fear and find out more about. I wonder if SHE believes there is one right person for HER…
* Alek: The bad guy that holds the world in his hand and has intrigued Winter – I want to hear more about him
* The two youth she has taken on and how they follow her a bit like ducklings imprinted on her
* Simon: The quartermaster there for her when she needs him
* The plot, writing and pace of this story
* That not all expected to be on the side of right are and on the flip side…not all that are expected to be evil are without a soul
* The chess game played out on the board of this story
* The mysteries solved
* That the evil were truly evil, remorseless, and nasty people that deserved to be taken down
* Winter’s “other face”
* Written down as I read: complex, taut, lone wolf, impulsive, traps within traps, brash, interesting, intriguing and more
* Not knowing who to trust
* The twists, turns and surprises
* Trying to figure out what the implication of 12 and all the ramifications it would have in this story
* Wondering how it will all play out

What I did not like:
* The loss of innocents
* The truly evil people unveiled…so deserved what they got

Did I enjoy this book? My – oh MY – I surely did!
Would I read more in this series? As soon as I can!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars… (mehr)