Book Review: ‘Red Tempest Brother’ is a Satisfying Conclusion to One of the Most Underrated Pirate Fantasy Series. It’s a must-read trilogy.
I need more people to read this series immediately. The Wintersea trilogy by H.M. Long is such an underrated pirate fantasy series and more people should be talking about it. It has some of the most unique magic and creatures, adventures and a romantic subplot. Red Tempest Brother is the conclusion to this series, and I had high hopes for it. It didn’t disappoint. While not perfect in terms of pacing and story (it got a little chaotic), I still loved this read, and would recommend this series to anyone who loves pirates, a winter setting, and weather magic. As usual, there are multiple POVs as many of the characters are separated, and have their own missions. Stakes are HIGH. I didn’t feel the magic was quite as strong this time for Mary, our main FMC. I absolutely loved her in the first two books, but this time around she took a bit of a backseat, even with POV chapters. Obviously she’s still a main character, but while there’s an overarching plots of racing to find some things (trying not to give spoilers here!), the twins really take center stage of this story. I would actually recommend reading these books in close succession because of how complex the magic and creatures are. I definitely had to go back and remind myself of what happened in book two to get up to speed. Some have said the ending was a bit rushed, and I can see how they felt that way, but I did feel this was a satisfying conclusion to this series.
Things to Know:
Final book in a completed trilogy
Weather magic
Pirates
Magical creatures
Romantic Subplot (slightly more than FTB this time)
Multi-POV
We start right back up where book two ended. I was pretty devastated because I thought Benedict was finally going to come around, but nooooo. He’s a problem, and still very much a morally gray character. Like I said above, this book really centers around the relationship of Samuel and Benedict. Yes, there are all of these different people, orgs, etc. moving around them, but as twins, it’s a matter of if blood ties win out in the end or not. And does Ben see Mary as family now?
I do wish we would have had a bit more closure around the secretive organization from book two. They seemed like the big bad, and yet, while mentioned, I didn’t really feel like we got that much from them this time. Yeah, there’s some medallions, some bad people around, but it wasn’t really explained, or maybe I felt like there wasn’t a firm defeat? Some of the ‘villains’ in this book were really only there for a short time, so it didn’t feel like there was this “one big villain” if that makes sense.
Overall though, I once again enjoyed the adventures on the Winter Sea, and I think you will too.
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