#The Winter Sea

[miamignonette]

i know he’s literally saying that he’s not into men but walk with me here—could this be the toxic yaoi this series has been missing?

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 4/5

Book Blurb: A stormsinger and pirate hunter join forces against a deathless pirate lord in this swashbuckling Jacobean adventure on the high-seas. Launching the Winter Sea series, full of magic, betrayal, redemption and fearsome women, for readers of Adrienne Young, R. J. Barker and Naomi Novik.

Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: a woman whose voice can still hurricanes and shatter armadas. Faced with servitude to pirate lord Silvanus Lirr, Mary offers her skills to his arch-rival in exchange for protection - and, more importantly, his help sending Lirr to a watery grave. But her new ally has a vendetta of his own, and Mary's dreams are dark and full of ghistings, spectral creatures who inhabit the ancient forests of her homeland and the figureheads of ships.

Samuel Rosser is a disgraced naval officer serving aboard The Hart, an infamous privateer commissioned to bring Lirr to justice. He will stop at nothing to capture Lirr, restore his good name and reclaim the only thing that stands between himself and madness: a talisman stolen by Mary.

Finally, driven into the eternal ice at the limits of their world, Mary and Samuel must choose their loyalties and battle forces older and more powerful than the pirates who would make them slaves.

Come sail the Winter Sea, for action-packed, high-stakes adventures, rich characterisation and epic plots full of intrigue and betrayal.

Review:

A stormsinger and a pirate hunter who find themselves intertwined as they face off against a deadly deathless pirate lord hell bent on finding treasure and becoming more powerful. Mary Firth is a Stormsinger, her voice has the ability to calm sails, create disasters and shatter armadas. Stormsingers are captured and used as slaves or indentured servants to pirates and Mary finds herself being auctioned off but this is only the begin of her journey as what she is truly after is finding her mother, another Stormsinger. Mary finds herself being hunted by Lirr, a deathless pirate lord who is somehow connected to both Mary and her mother. Then there is samuel Rosser, a disgraced naval officer who is also a Sooth, someone who can catch glimpses of the future and travel into the Other. In this world there are creatures known as ghistens who are made from wood and are essentially attached to ships and they protect and act as a guardian of the ship. Samuel is also hunting down Lirr, as he is commissioned to bring Lirr to justice yet the moment he meets Mary at the auction he can't seem to get her out of his head, especially because she steals his coat and his special talisman that is the only thing keeping him from slipping into madness. Soon both Mary and Samuel find themselves constantly running into one another as they both go after Lirr, deal with pirates and gun fights, betrayals, and the very complicated feelings growing between them. This is a great read for fans of Pirates of the Caribbean! Its the first book in the series and I am excited to see where the next book goes. This book was a bit slow but did pick up by the end so hopefully the next one is better, it did feel like it dragged at some moments but I did enjoy the world that was created in the stories. I am excited to see Samuel and Mary's relationship in the next book and how they grow. Overall if you are looking for a pirate book with a slow burn romance, action, betrayal, and magic then give this one a go!

*Spoilers*: Mary's mother Anne use to work with Lirr on a ship but then she got pregnant by a crew member and had Anne. Lirr has Anne and uses her as his own ship's stormsinger. Lirr himself is a deathless pirate because he is combined with a ghisten, something he tried to do to Anne but Anne instead had said ghisten (Tane) bond with Mary. Samuel is disgraced from the navy because his twin brother Benedict slept with their captain's wife (his brother has the ability to control people's minds and persuade them do things) and Samuel took the blame to save his brother, Benedict tried to do the same to Mary but she escaped in time. Lirr is killed off and Anne and Samuel decide to work together on their own ship.

*Thanks Netgalley and Titan Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Winter Sea | Author: Susanna Kearsley | Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark (2010)

[pmg227]

Favorite Reads of April '24

“Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.” Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall Being Elisabeth Elliot: The Authorized Biography: Later Years Ellen Vaughn. Though I’ve known that Elisabeth Elliot was the wife of Jim Elliot (a missionary killed in Ecuador in 1956), that’s pretty much all I knew about her. A shame since she was living and writing during my younger…

[la7ma-mafrooma]

The fact that we, Arabic-speaking average people(aka non-journalists), have to keep up with translating Palestinian posts from Arabic to English to avoid having Western Media/Pro-Zionists mistranslate on purpose, says enough about how we all lost trust in the media. From the "there's a list" guy who was standing in front of a calendar and condemning the days of the week, to the BBC's mistranslation of a freed Palestinian hostage's interview. I will try my best to keep translating whatever I can find, and I encourage my fellow bilingual/multilingual Arabs to do the same. It's already sad enough that Palestinian journalists and even children have to use English in videos instead of their native tongue in order to get the world leaders' attention.

Please keep speaking about Palestine.

[oddarette]

Snowglobe manatee ❄️

[northgazaupdates]

Winter is coming😬🐻‍❄️🌨️🌬️❄️

The Abu Alwan children are in need of winter clothing and supplies!

Gaza has an eastern Mediterranean climate, which includes hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. Nighttime winter temperatures can easily go below freezing. While this may not seem urgent for healthy, grown adults, it can actually be quite dangerous. Especially for small children, the elderly, and sick and malnourished people—which, after more than a year of constant famine and massacres, includes all of Gaza.

Last year, many people in Gaza were martyred due to hypothermia, particularly small children. The Abu Alwan twins Saba and Qusay were born in springtime 2024, they have never gone through winter before. They have no good weather clothing, and because they are also sickly and malnourished, they are extremely vulnerable to hypothermia.

Please help Saba, Qusay, and their 4 y/o sister Ghina withstand the coming winter. Just a single item of warm clothing for infants costs nearly $50 USD, the family needs your support to be able to afford winter clothes for the children!

You can support the family in 3 different ways:

Venmo @gothhabiba following these directions

GoFundMe donations at this link

Contacting the children’s father Mohammed on WhatsApp at +970 592 440 590

Copy-pasting this link across all your social media accounts: https://gofund.me/b84298b0

Thank you🩵

[bucky-bucky-bucky-bucky]

“Bucky’s the winter soldier again!!!!! He’s shooting with his left hand!!! He only uses his left when he’s the winter soldier!!!!!”

I present to you:

Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America: Civil War

And

Falcon and the Winter Soldier

[gatitolatte]

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ 𓂃࿁ té—jazmín ♫♪ 。.・

[puppyeared]

my attempt at making a fursona

[miamignonette]

providing insightful commentary on goodreads

[nothingbizzare]

Cold winds and warm hands

[dvchvnde]

EXCERPT: JOHN PRICE, WINTER SOLDIER AU.

You're still getting used to the sight of him—bare faced in patches: the beard shorn off into a mere shadow of what it was before; a choice he'd made for himself after scrubbing down in a long shower, refusing any help or medical aid—and he doesn't make it any easier for you in these brief, uncomfortable stages of acclimation you suffer through.

Hands lashing out into dead air. Fingers catching, unyielding and firm, on your skin. Nails—split and jagged; regrown in patches after being ripped off over and over again (for hree years, is the mocking whisper snaking along the nausea when you look at the pinked-tinged beds)—burrowing into your flesh. Anchoring you in place as he bends down, moulds his frame around you. Malleable shadow eating you whole.

Indomitable.

John Price was always an intimidating man.

Towering. Broad. Gruff. Surly. Mean old man was often thrown around amongst the new recruits, ones too scared to voice what they really thought:

Miserable fucking bastard.

His weight thrown around like an extension of himself—all raw, barely contained anger trembling out through the cracks. Lashing thick, brutal lines across his forehead. In the sharp, downward tug of his mouth tucked behind a bed of brunt umbre hair.

He was difficult to deal with on a good day, even when he'd offer that mocking smile of his. A parody of geniality—lips split upwards like a crocodiles maw.

(come, come, put your hand inside this beasts jaws; he won't bite—)

As fucking if.

You've only known him in pieces. Patches. Barely enough to make a whole picture, but you could still fill in the empty spaces with that grizzled anger of his that seemed to roll off of him in waves.

(no wonder he burns so hot—it's all that fury.)

Mostly, he'd come to dress you down in front of everyone watching. Snapping at the sight of your desk—organised chaos a true oxymoron (and for the most part, that seemed to be what he thought of you: a moron)—and how you handled files, and how you waltzed around like you owned the place—

and do you, sweetheart? do you own this place, mm? is that why you never listen to a goddamn thing i tell you?

All-in-all: a miserable fucking man.

And one made of sharp, brutal contradictions. Paradoxes layered over each other. Sealed with fury—of the righteous, pragmatic kind—and reinforced with an utilitarian core. Forlorn hope in the distinct shape of a man, one always readying himself for a pyrrhic victory (but a victory, nevertheless).

Easy, in hindsight, to deal with when you knew how to navigate the frothing gyre of anger and juxtapositions that made up the man who brute force, physicality, to get what he wanted.

By sharp contrast, the version of him who stands before is more enigmatic than the mangled mess of savagery and labyrinthine defenses. Almost unknowable. Unfathomable.

Even more so when he lifts his hand—scarred up, still blistered and bruised from fighting his way through fire and kin to get to you—and presses those mangled knuckles to the swell of your cheek, as tender as a man like him could ever allow himself to be, and runs a soft, shallow line down the side of your face. Eyes—still that same, dizzying blue—darken into liquid sapphire as he stares at you. Inexplicably soft. Lids crested. Half-mast in pleasure as if staring at your face was relaxing. Comforting.

Something swirls in those deep, endless lagoons. Some implacable emotion—all at once too much; too heavy—frissoning over his feature. A paroxysm. You can't catch it. Can't define it.

It's unquantifiable. Unknowable. And yet—

You know, instantly, that John Price would never look at you with something this archaic, this intense, brimming up like geysers in the endless spill of blue that can't seem to look away from you.

This man is not John Price.

But when he pulls you into a kiss—one softer and sweeter than you'd ever imagined the infamous captain could ever be capable of—you let him.

In fact, you kiss back.

And you'd really rather not think about what that says about you.

[lepetitdragonvert]

The Ice Ship

Artist : Angela Barrett (b. 1955)

[downfalldestiny]

Once the harsh winter is gone, when come the good and easier days, we often encounter bears swimming by the ice edge. Polar bears are extremely capable of having fun alone with whatever they find 🐻‍❄️ !.

[oddarette]

Snowmanatee ⛄️