Throughout The Traitor of Redwinter, the follow-up to The Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald, dread seeped from the story, page by page. A title with the word traitor in it, with a main character whose power to see the spirits of the dead, comes with the punishment of death, and all the emotional baggage between the mostly young cast all thrown together results in a follow-up that begins with tension straight away. The author raises the stakes regarding Raine’s situation as an apprentice, a young woman, and a Sarathi.

While Raine no longer has the scar across her mind that protected her from the pain of her trauma in the first book, she is still trying to build walls between herself and the people she loves in other destructive ways. She is recreating the scar by putting distance between herself and others in a self-fulfilling prophecy. She believes she is an outsider who’ll never belong, so she makes decisions that may ostracize her to make it accurate. From chapter one, Raine, now armed with a book, The Ashtai Grimore, is already tempting fate by reading, expanding, and using her Sarathi abilities to find more information. She keeps turning page after page, hoping to find a way to rid herself of her abilities, but only grows in power as she learns.

A three-way dread is going on, and a Venn diagram of dread circles Raine’s decisions. Raine the Draoghn, Raine the Sarathi, and Raine the young woman. The latter fills me with dread the most as Raine navigates friendship, romance, and relationships; just as Raine struggled with her identity as a servant of Redwinter now that she is an apprentice, you’d think her struggles with her identity were over, but that leaves room to struggle with socializing with her peers. In multiple nail-biting situations, she continues to perform what the reader and she knows will result in her execution if she gets caught. Between balancing the everyday life of a teenager trying to figure things out is a life anything from ordinary resulting in an emotional roller coaster of a read.

The world-building in the first book established a foundation of Redwinter as a setting and the magic of the Draoghn. The second expands the setting beyond the city of Harranir and Redwinter and delves deep into the history of key moments and figures that tie into the main story in ways the reader may not see coming. The author makes the revelations feel like they were naturally going to happen, yet they still take readers by surprise. McDonald adds more complexities to the abilities of the Draoghn and the Sarathi while weaving them so well into the history and politics of the author’s world.

The Redwinter Chronicle‘s second book in no way suffers from the second book slump. Most of it from chapter one feels like the story is plummeting down a mountainside with only little hills and valleys to slow down the plunge. In The Daughter of Redwinter, Raine is an easy character to become invested in. In the follow-up, McDonald and Raine test the limits of that investment with her rash decisions, headstrong actions, and a stressful brew of self-sabotage mixed with self-sacrifice. McDonald’s ability to find the voice of young adults amid a fantasy world continues as Raine acts her age in ways that, as someone closer to middle age, had me constantly wincing and asking please don’t do that, Raine, you’re stressing me out. In situations of love, violence, friendship, the Draoghn, and her Sarathi magic, she can’t seem to help herself in making, not so much the wrong decisions but ones she knows goes against what she actually wants. Like any eighteen-year-old, she constantly has difficulty with her identity: who she is, who she wants to be, and who she wants to be with.

All of this is interwoven deftly with the rebellion of the northern clans approaching the doorstep of Redwinter, the king growing weaker, and Ovitus returning not only without an apology to Raine but now betrothed to the king’s daughter. He returns to Redwinter, presumably a changed man physically and in personality, which I did not believe for a second. However, many of the twists and turns in the book start with a revelation that any reader could see coming, only for there to be a layer underneath that comes as a complete surprise.

The Traitor of Redwinter is a natural progression from The Daughter of Redwinter and a significant elevation. The stakes are raised on every level, from Raine’s internal struggle to the politics of Redwinter. While introducing more formidable foes and ethical dilemmas with broader impact, it also deals with Raine’s identity and how one chooses to use the power they’ve been given. The book distressed me in the best way a book can because the first book made me care about the people in it, and the second put them in the thick of it.

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Joshua was provided an advance copy of the book by Tor Books.

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