We are told, again and again, from the start of the novel, that Jack and Fleur are in love with each other. Does he touch things and freeze them? Does he blow cold breath on people? Does he just walk around aimlessly, day to day, covered from head to toe in frost, and then go to sleep only to wake up and do it again the next day? We never get any insight into what it really means to be Winter, Spring, Summer or Autumn other than a peek of their abilities in times of crises. I don't know what usually happens when Jack resides as Winter. But as characters in this story, we never live any certain period of time during their “reigning” moment over their section of the world. Yes, obviously, we know the basics of that which comes to pass during each season because we live these seasons in our every day lives. Because, unfortunately, we don't really get a lot of information on how things occur.

That's the gist that I got from what the book told me before things started to develop. They're immortal after Gaia gifts them with the power of their season at the moment of their human death. They go through a cycle of hunting each other so that they may take over as the standing season at that moment, and send the one before them “home.” The season that is then eliminated is kept sleeping in stasis, after which time they awaken again, train, and then go out into the world to find and kill the season before them and repeat the cycle. As their respective seasons, Jack, Fleur, Julio and Amber “manifest” them. Our world has four seasons, each waning and renewing depending on the time of year. That's my main bone to pick with this novel: things are never quite concrete. If someone of flesh and blood embodied the concept of a season, what would that life entail? I don't think that I ever got an answer to that simple question. 'Winter's crown may be heavy on your head.īut you hold eternal spring in your heart.' Thank you Edelweiss and HarperTeen for this ARC.

Seasons of the Storm by Elle Cosimano