Winter Rising

By: Alex Callister

Narrated by: Ell Potter

Winter returns to face the most feared hitman of all time, the Guardsman.

Winter has put the world of organised crime into crisis by unmasking its boss, Alek Konstantin. Hunted and permanently on the run, he has been caught on camera in Mexico, Virginia and Marseille. Retracing his steps, Winter attempts to uncover his motives and bring the world's most wanted man out of hiding using the tracker he embedded in her wrist. But things aren't quite that simple. After finding Lucy and watching her die a sickening death, Winter's desire to bring down the legendary Guardsman overrides her orders. Knowing Firestorm’s top contract killer is experimenting on victims, she takes a contract out on herself to catch him.

Once again disguised as her alter ego, Snow White, Winter follows the Guardsman to Moscow expecting to spring the trap. However, things aren't quite what they seem. Who is the Guardsman and why does he know everything about Winter? With the reality of the situation unravelling as the world’s leaders assemble in London, just how much has Winter underestimated her opponent and is the realisation all too late?

Winter faces her biggest challenge yet in this dark commentary on our surveillance society.

©2019 Alex Callister (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Critic reviews

"If you like Becky Sharp or Emma Peel or Lisbeth Salander, you will love Winter: she can out-punch Bourne and out-pull Bond. And her zinging one-liners leave Jack Reacher for dead." (Andy Martin, author of Reacher Said Nothing and With Child.

Loved it!!

Great audible performance by Ell Potter and a story line that keeps you on the edge of your seat!

Winter is a boss!

Note: This is book 2 in the series and it works best if you read book 1 first.

Winter is a busy bee this book. She’s actually in charge of something. Scary, I know. Who would seriously give Winter responsibility like that? The British government, apparently. But it leaves the door open for a lot more humor. I especially liked that scene where she had an entire class jumping on one foot barking like poodles. lol

There’s also a crew of sidekicks like Zu, Simon, and Pansy Face. Zu was my favorite. I loved her sense of humor and how she effortlessly kept up. Simon was like our big huggable emotional-support bear. And Winter gets a lot of time outside the office, in the field, where she is at her best. While I wasn’t surprised to learn that management played her, I think her reactions were spot on.

The pacing moves swiftly but there a few quiet moments that give Winter (and the reader) time to regroup. I enjoyed the cat and mouse game as Winter tries to track, lure, and trap the Guardsman, e very evil sort that keeps leaving dead-body calling cards.

Winter often has trouble reading subtler emotions, giving her a kind of callous demeanor. But then we see her struggling with putting others through pain, even the enemy. This was very humanizing and showed that Winter does have depth. She’s not just sexual innuendos and sharp, pointy knives.

Near the end, there’s a lot of action and some surprises. I did not see that coming. Nor that. Or that. But that one thing I did expect. But not that other thing. It was an awesome rollercoaster ride there at the end! This story surpassed book 1, which I quite enjoyed. I really look forward to book 3. 5/5 stars.

The Narration: Ell Potter is a joy to listen to. She was good in book 1 but here I think she’s even more in tune with Winter and the story. I love the way she carries off the snark and other humorous moments. Porter always sounds engaged in the tale and her variety of voices was great for keeping all the characters separate. Her male voices were well done. There were no tech issues with this recording. 5/5 stars.

--

I have to admit I bailed on the first novel in this series, though there was enough in what I did hear to persuade me to try the next book. I'll put the reasons on the table, since they came up a lot in the user reviews.

The main problem was that the main character was described as a little too super. Her hiring committee goes on about her very high intelligence, her talent for extreme sports, her uncanny computer skills, how beautiful she is ... She isn't able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, though, since I imagine it would have come up. She also describes herself as "sexually omnivorous," which I wouldn't have thought came up much in job interviews. That sounded like a warning sign, since the expression sounds gimmicky, and you worry that at some point the story will stop to give you a lecture about it.

Then Winter does display truly supernatural hacking skills, and extraordinary sports skills, and manages to come across Aleks Konstantin, the man with an unknown face that everyone in the world is looking for, though she has no real way of knowing that's him. Then all the bad guys are trying to kill her to keep his secret, though you'd think that she'd have exhausted her usefulness as soon as she got back to headquarters. No Identikit in Britain, apparently, And then ... Well, whatever. That was enough for me.

But thinking about it, that's how stories like this always used to work. Doc Savage was so super and was described in such an adoring way by the narrator that it became embarrassing, and that was typical for pulp heroes. The James Bond stories were absurd, too, and had big organizations like SPECTRE. As for the sexual omnivorousness, it appears that basically means Winter is bisexual and mostly likes good looking people, and yeah, it's pretty logical for this kind of secret agent fantasy, where the agent is good at violence and irresistible to anyone she takes a fancy to. Ian Fleming knew to tone down the superhuman qualities a little (though the Bond movies don't), but, on the other hand, Callister leaves out the sadism and sexism, while still making Winter as emotionally damaged as Bond, so let's call it a draw.

For me, what really makes this work, and led me to try again, is Ell Porter's narration. She's done the hard work to make the reading hang together in a seamless way, she's talented, and she has an infectious joy in the story. She's also got a terrifically appealing voice.

I suppose there are spoilers in what follows, though probably not for anyone who's listened to the first book. It occurred to me as the book went on that, whatever else the Winter stories are, they're also romance novels. That's a risky statement, since all I know about the genre is what I see in the blurbs for Audible books, but the story seems to come down to the relationship between Winter and the bad boy Prince of Darkness. Which is quite okay. It's engaging, the characters are equals, and it makes for a consistent story. After all, one of the premises is that Konstantin is actually trying to be a force for good, by imposing order from inside on some destructive forces, while Winter is tasked with bringing him down. Sooner or later they'll have to join forces, either officially or unofficially.

I don't know whether this is just my problem, but I burn audiobooks as CDs, and in place of the ninth CD, where a lot of the action is, one of the earlier CDs got duplicated.

OBSESSED

Seriously when is book 3 coming out?? Alex Callister is amazing, I am continually enthralled by Winter and Alec. Ell Potter needs to narrate more books bc I love her voice and accents. All around one of my favorite series on Audible! I've already listened to Book 1 + Book 2 twice !

I can’t stop reading

The storyline and the characters are so enthralling. I am literally mesmerized by the story. I want to be Winter!

Cat and Mouse Chase

The Winter Series Book 2 by Alex Callister was a great addition to the series. I loved book one, but book two here quickly became my favorite and it wanting to read/listen to the rest of the series. The narrator did a simply amazing job in bringing both Winter and Guardsman to life. I really loved the cat and mouse chase with how I was never quite sure who was the cat and who was the mouse.