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    Cold Magic
    Cold Magic
    Cold Magic
    Audiobook17 hours

    Cold Magic

    Written by Kate Elliott

    Narrated by Charlotte Parry

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The Wild Hunt is stirring - and the dragons are finally waking from their long sleep... Cat Barahal was the only survivor of the flood that took her parents. Raised by her extended family, she and her cousin, Bee, are unaware of the dangers that threaten them both. Though they are in beginning of the Industrial Age, magic - and the power of the Cold Mages - still hold sway. Now, betrayed by her family and forced to marry a powerful Cold Mage, Cat will be drawn into a labyrinth of politics. There she will learn the full ruthlessness of the rule of the Cold Mages. What do the Cold Mages want from her? And who will help Cat in her struggle against them?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 6, 2013
    ISBN9781470380182
    Cold Magic
    Author

    Kate Elliott

    Kate Elliott has been writing science fiction and fantasy for 30 years, after bursting onto the scene with Jaran. She is best known for her Crown of Stars epic fantasy series and the New York Times bestselling YA fantasy Court of Fives. Elliott's particular focus is immersive world-building & centering women in epic stories of adventure, amidst transformative cultural change. She lives in Hawaii, where she paddles outrigger canoes & spoils her Schnauzer.

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    Reviews for Cold Magic

    4/5

    314 ratings42 reviews

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    • 5/5
      4.5 stars, with my only quibble being that this book is very much the first in a longer whole, rather than a fully complete tale on its own.

      Cathereine, a smart (and smart-mouthed) woman on the cusp of her legal adulthood at 20 is suddenly required to marry a powerful mage due to a mysterious contract between their families. overwhelmed, she goes with him as the law and familial honor demand, but learns that nothing about her life is what it seems. there's a far murkier and wider political sphere than she's ever noticed, her parents may have been rebels in it, in fact nothing about her family is what she's always believed to be true, she's got a husband she doesn't know and can't possibly trust, and there's no way of knowing how she fits in to the bigger picture or just what is going on.

      racing from peril to adventure seeking the answers makes for un-put-down-able reading. very recommended, but with that wide-open (thankfully not cliff hanger-y!!) ending, you'll wish the sequel was available.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Fast paced, amazing. I hadn't expected to be gripped by her emotions but I was swept away towards the very end of the book.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable romp through a not-quite-Europe where early technology and magic meet in conflict. This book wasn't as polished nor the characters as enthralling as Kate Elliott's best, but Cold Magic still held my interest enough to make me look forward to the 2nd book in the Trilogy.

    • 4/5
      I really liked this book, but I wish it wasn't part of a trilogy. There was more than enough action/adventure/story in this one volume.
    • 3/5
      It was interesting with good plot twists so I wanted to know what happened and continued reading. It wasn't amazing. Sometimes is drawled on annoyingly. It was entertaining though and that is good enough sometimes.
    • 1/5
      Where do I even begin?

      This book reads like a first draft. What's more, it reads like a NaNoWriMo first draft, with oodles and oodles of pointless description that seem to serve no purpose but to pad the page count. But unlike the NaNoWriMo requirement, this book is really long. According to my phone's Kindle app, it is 580 pages long. There might be 300 pages' worth of content in there. Look, there's nothing wrong with your first draft being overlong and unwieldy with lots of pointless stuff that needs to be cut out, but if the finished product is like this, it's a big problem. Most of my antipathy for this book is probably due to this.

      Considering the 580 page length, it feels like not a lot really happens, either. Looking back on it, I guess stuff happened, but the way I remember it is: something happened at 10% in, another thing happened at 42% in... and although reviews on Goodreads had suggested that the book would get better in the second half, it really didn't. It continued to be a slow and plodding story in which I was desperate for something, anything interesting to happen. At 54% into the book she did seem to die, which fit my criteria quite admirably, but unfortunately she didn't actually die and kept on narrating from the spirit realm. And then returned back into the "real" realm, where she discovered that she had a brother who was a giant cat. Mmhmm.

      What did happen in the second half was narrator Cat randomly crushing on her would-be murderer and general vain and conceited twerp, Andevai. As well, in the last 20% of the book, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a vast, popular uprising, but not to worry, as if this novel would spend much time contemplating that! Instead, we hear all about Cat's aforementioned sudden inexplicable love for Andevai. I'm assuming that this is what the next two books in the trilogy are going to be about (the sudden inexplicable love that is, I wouldn't hold out any hope it'll be about the uprising) but I don't really intend to find out.

      My review might seem unrelentingly negative, but honestly I'm just frustrated that I spent so long reading this book, which was set in the lead-up to a mass uprising with a woman of colour for a protagonist, and it was so boring. How do you even have a beginning like this and make it so boring? How is this even possible?? Like, there's potential here, and it's completely squandered and buried under hundreds of pages of hardly anything ever happening. Ugh. If you'd like me to begrudgingly admit some things that I liked:

      1. the demonisation of Camjiata over the whole book - I don't recall any huge block of exposition at once, but he's gradually depicted as some incredibly evil, dangerous guy, who challenged the political order (even though we can see this order is really bad) - before it's revealed that he's a radical who isn't too bad.

      2. that Cat is a member of a minority group... this got annoying when it was 755867968 characters commenting on her shiny black hair, but it was good when it involved her explaining how the Romans had demonised her people, for instance. It wasn't a whitewashed vision of alternate-universe nineteenth-century Europe, which I appreciated.

      3. the basic story around Cat's parentage, I guess... except IF IT COULD HAVE BEEN GOT THROUGH A BIT FASTER, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT.

      Yeah.
    • 4/5
      This is a story centered around the friendship between two women.

      That statement shouldn't feel like such a revelation, but it does. How many books with female protagonists ultimately focus on the heroine's relationships with men? How many of these heroines just don't have a female friend who means more to her than anyone in the world? It's staggering to me now, when I realize how few heroines are like that. It's a poor reflection of reality, where female friendships not only define many women's lives, but can change the world. Kate Elliott understands that a friendship between women is a bond of power and respect, worthy to have epic stories told of them. Add that both of these women are women of color, and it becomes even more revolutionary.

      That's one reason I love this book with all my heart. The friendship between Bee and Cat is beautiful and real. I also love it for worldbuilding you can positively drown in.

      It takes a master of worldbuilding to join as many disparate elements as Elliott does. An Ice Age that never ends, three kinds of magic, alternate history, and giant sentient velociraptors (!!!) shouldn't mesh together, but they do. They mesh in a way that makes me thirst to learn more about this world. In fact, I could probably read an entire encyclopedia of this fictional world and be content. That, my friends, is the mark of good worldbuilding.

      This book was an inspiration to me, both as a reader and a writer.
    • 4/5
      Took a long while to get going. Not too bad in the end
    • 5/5
      This steampunk fantasy begins with a forced marriage and forces a young woman named Cat to face a world turned upside down where nothing she knew about herself proves to be true. Cat has to learn about herself while avoiding being killed and also has to save her cousin from a terrible fate. Great start to a series.
    • 4/5
      Great characters, great worldbuilding, great fun. Could have done without random falling-in-lust with the captor/enemy, even if it happens without her being fully aware of it - or possibly she's just in denial; either way it makes me want to get her into therapy to deal with the Stockholm syndrome. But that was a small part of a story mostly about Cat learning about who and what she is, and where the relationship with her cousin feels far more important.
    • 4/5
      Now that the book is complete I realize fully how much I loved it; it contains almost all of my Most Desired Fantasy Elements:

      -Female friendship. Female devotion. A plot hinged on women caring about each other and fighting with fierce determination to protect one another
      -Low level romance that influences the behavior of the main character in very minor ways
      -A fully realized world with many different cultures and a well-established history
      -Diverse characters!!!!!
      -Magic systems that make sense and technological systems that are incredibly interesting

      My only complaint really is the pacing. I felt perhaps the repetitiveness of certain scenes could have been edited. But beyond that this book gives me hope for the genre and really, what more can you ask?
    • 4/5
      Cat and Bee are cousins and the best of friends. They've been raised together by Bee's parents. They've been given the same advantages of schooling and training in weapons. They think of themselves as almost sisters and they're treated as such by the entire family. Until the day comes that Cat is betrayed by the family she thought she knew and Bee, feeling equally betrayed, pledges to save Cat if she at all can.

      The world-building for this series is exquisite. In this world the ice age lasted much longer and as a result even some of the terrain is different. Cold magic, that depends on the ice, is strong in Europa, and the fey world is never far away.
    • 4/5
      This is all worldbuilding, creating the story and the background for what sounds like an interesting adventure, it's a world a lot like our own, but with some subtle differences. Rome didn't really fall, much of the north of Europe is under Ice and there's a land-bridge between England and Europe. Switzerland is under ice as well and there are cold-mages. Cat Barahal and her cousin Bee think they understand their world but things are turned on their head when family politics force Cat into a marriage that will complicate her life.There's a lot of information and at the same time a dearth of information in this book, I want more but I'm hoping I'll learn more at the same time.It's an interesting beginning to a story if a bit convoluted.
    • 3/5
      So considering this is an alternate history, steampunk, fantasy, romance, it has a lot of interesting things going for it. I do feel like I need to do more research into the world the story is set it as many things are still fuzzy. I definitely want to read the next one as the conflict is not resolved in this story and there are many open questions for each character's development. But the fact that I want to read more shows that these cliff hangers weren't cheaply handled.

      ETA: reading the reviews of others reminded me of a few grievances. Repetition: If I had to read the phrase "[some sort of keeping ones mouth shut] tasted like ashes" ONE MORE TIME! Also I detest the trope of having female characters love/loathe their male foil. And I get it, it was super cold, again. Hehe. I'm done complaining. Still want to read the rest!
    • 1/5
      I'm on the lookout for the next great fantasy series. This is not the one I was looking for. It was filled with some neat world building and exotic ideas thrown into the mix; however, it was wrecked with plot holes, garrulous characters, and puzzling pacing leaving this steampunk fantasy a cold mess.
    • 3/5
      I almost gave up on this book about 75 pages in. But I did finish it. Like other folks have said, it improves in the second half.

      There are a lot of good things here. The main characters are compelling. The world is different and interesting. The plot, once it gets going, is pretty good.

      But there are a number of things that really got on my nerves.
      * The plot takes /forever/ to start happening. I'm just not that interested in tittering schoolgirls going to school, but they do that for the first 50-100 pages.
      * The way exposition is done in the beginning. The main character will start walking across a room on one page, stop in the middle of a sentence to give us 1.5 pages of unrelated infodump, take a step in the middle of the room, give us another half page of infodump, and finally reach the other side of the room ages later. Combined with a plot that already starts slow, this makes it really hard to stay engaged. It's not even the amount of exposition that bothered me; it's the way it interrupts what minimal action there is.
      * The way Cat starts falling for the guy who's abducted and treated her terribly, before he even begins to reform.
    • 3/5
      I'm very, very happy with this book. It was really a lot of fun to read. I was up w/ insomnia / illness most of last night and reading Cold Magic took a lot of the sting out of feeling crummy.

      Here's what I liked about this book: Elliot clearly is an experienced and skilled writer. With this new series, however, she did some world building experiments w/ her family. This gave us a mash up (her words) between character building and plot development of an established writer and the creative experimentation of collaborative world building.

      There is TOO MUCH in the world building to work, except, it does. The mix of cultures (Mali, Celts, Phoenicians, Romans, Pre-rennaissance feudal Eruope, steampunk dinosaurs) plus the mix of magic and the world (ice mages, little-ice-age, lowered sea coasts) is TOO MUCH to track, except, it isn't.

      What makes it all work is Kate Elliot's steady hand w/ character building and the way she quickly inspired trust (for this reader, anyway) to stop trying to SOLVE the novel and just enjoy the read. She has a masters' touch for how much backstory, how much character, how much mystery to dole out at a time. Reading Cold Fire was never more than simply reading a story, and Elliot kept a very good pace with excellent blocking that limited the number of things in front of the readers' attention at any one time, while never letting us quite lose track of clues, background characters, plot or thematic threads.

      The setting felt like is was built by a first-time novelist. In a good way, it didn't seem dictated by formulaic criteria like "How will this fit into a novel's structure." It has freedom and dash. Yet the story reads like a masters' work, clearly worked through many times and edited with a close eye and confidence.

      This is my first Kate Elliot novel, but it certainly will not be my last.

      Recommended for those who like fantasy stories and don't mind experimentation with settings.
    • 5/5
      An absorbing story of a girl coming of age and finding out she's not who she thought she was. I would pick up this book and become lost in the adventure and for me, that's the sign of a great story. Can't wait to read the next in this trilogy.
    • 4/5
      Plot: 4stars
      Characters: 4 stars
      Style: 4 stars
      Pace: 3 1/2 stars

      Knowing I was ahead on my reading for the month, I decided it would be a good idea to balance out some of the shorter works with a good epic fantasy novel. Took me a bit longer than I would have prefered, as I was reading in small, stolen bits of time at night. Still, I love the way the cultures blend and separate, and the way the fantastical elements blended wonderfully with the more mundane. I definitely will read the rest of hers when I'm in the moods for epics. :)
    • 3/5
      Brilliant world-building makes up for a plot and characterization that strain credulity given the thinness of character interactions. A few too many scenes appear to be just setups for the alt-history info dump. The romance is a bit unbelievable given the development. Still though, when it does get to action and ideas, it delivers.
    • 3/5
      2013 was an excellent year for me, not least because I finally got to check out a ton of authors I've never read before but have always wanted to! And Kate Elliott is definitely one of them. The positive things I've heard about her books, especially praise for her Crossroads trilogy, have always piqued my curiosity and made me feel like I'm missing out. So when I saw the Cold Magic ebook on sale a few months back, I snapped it up and didn't even hesitate for a second.From its description, the book sounded like it would be right up my alley. Dawn of a new age? An Industrial Revolution which heralds inventions and technologies never seen before? Throw in a young, educated heroine caught up in the middle of this movement, and I thought it was going to be a winner for sure.In many ways, I was correct. This is undoubtly a good book. The story is an intricate web of political intrigue and hidden truths, taking place in a world that is practically overwhelming with its multiple facets. And Catherine "Cat" Hassi Barahal is a headstrong protagonist, embarking on a perilous adventure to find out who she really is. All in all, I was quite enchanted by this novel and all the wondrous magic, people and creatures Cat encountered on her journey.And yet, I can't shake the feeling that this book could have been so much more. I wanted it to be great; I wanted to be amazed, but something always stopped me just short of getting to that point. After a while, I was finally able to pin down why I felt this way. Essentially, everything I mentioned before -- the fascinating characters, setting, and plot -- all started out on the right track, but ultimately never seemed to reach their potential.Perhaps the most frustrating of those for me is the setting, which had everything going for it with its steampunky flavor and even an alternate spirit realm. I was intrigued by the idea of a clash between magic and science, between the old and the new, but unfortunately what I'd hoped for never really materialized. Don't get me wrong; it's a complex and imaginative world, but it somehow lacked coherence. Incidentally, I felt much the same way about the story, which started losing its momentum after a strong introduction, in part due to the lack of clear direction.I also felt ambivalent towards Cat. I didn't dislike her but I didn't like her either, and therein lies the problem. It's hard to fully appreciate a book when the protagonist fails to interest me. Even now I can think of very little to say about her, except that I didn't really care for the way she was drawn to Andevai. Among my biggest pet peeves is when heroines fall for men who treat them badly, and Cat dances dangerously close to that line. Here's a man who snatches her from her home, speaks to her gruffly, and is an all around cold, arrogant jerk. By all rights she should want nothing to do with him, and yet he is shaping up to be the love interest.I guess I'll just have to wait to find out what happens. Though I liked this book well enough, I'm also not in any hurry to pick up the sequel. I'm certainly not writing this series off yet, but I have a feeling my next Kate Elliott book will probably be something else. After all, I have heard that her Spiritwalker series is very different from her previous work, and who knows, perhaps I'll check out the Crossroads trilogy first.
    • 4/5
      first in a trilogy, i will continue. there were sections of history lesson/backstory that i kinda skimmed, because it was a little too much, but the overall world-building was great, and the characters made me care.
    • 5/5
      Awesome book. Alternate history steampunk fantasy.

      Phoenicians won (or didn't lose) - i.e. Carthago wasn't "delenda est."

      Plus unusual magic.

      Elliott manages to come up with inventive yet utterly right variations on familiar tropes in everything from magic to social structures. Amazing and splendid to read something that isn't just rewarmed feudalism. Waiting eagerly for the next book.
    • 4/5
      Such a fantastic world, I love Elliott's exploration of science and magic opposing each other. Lots of politics and mysterious backstory, which makes up for the fact that I never really warmed up to Bea.
    • 4/5
      What an excellent book.

      I'm tempted to lead off with a list of all the things this book does right: it passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, almost the entire cast of characters are people of color, it features a neat romantic thread that doesn't overwhelm the plot or diminish the book's loving family relationships, etc.

      Except I think it would be a shame to suggest that COLD MAGIC is only good by comparison. It's not a book that succeeds by avoiding potholes within which other books have foundered. It's a book that succeeds by leaping from strength to strength -- starting with a magnificently realized alt-history in which the Roman Empire never died and all of Europe has been transformed by a massive exodus from Africa, a world in which magic is real and terrifying, Napoleon has risen under a new name, and a prophecy leads an arrogant, badly damaged man to demand our protagonist, Catherine's, hand in marriage.

      I was warned that COLD MAGIC starts slow, though I never wanted to put it down. The first ten percent or so of the novel show us a single day in Catherine's 'ordinary world' and the pages of cozy domesticity and university hijinks contrast starkly with the crash and tumble of events once they really get rolling, when Cat runs from one disaster into the next, surviving on wit and swordplay. In any case, I was glad to learn so much about Catherine and see what her life was like before she's torn away from it. I admired her love for her family, her willingness to endure and sacrifice on their behalf, her faith in their love for her. I loved Cat's relationship with her sister, Bee, and this novel is built on the bedrock of their devotion to one another.

      I loved Cat. Speaking of things done right: everything about Cat. She's been raised to spycraft, which means she's well-educated, athletic, good with a sword, and smart. She's emotional - she cries kind of a lot, though with good cause - but masters her emotions without ever being ashamed of them. And while plenty of insecure goons pop up to squawk about how outspoken Cat is, and how she should learn to keep her mouth shut, I found her even-tempered and cool in a crisis.

      And I loved the growth of Cat's relationship to Andevai. Kate Elliot channels Mr. Darcy hardcore with Andevai; Andevai is basically Darcy on steroids. He's even more brittle than Darcy, and at first he's deeply childish, a brat who badly needs to grow up. But the more we learn about Andevai the more we see his damage, and he faces his own crises and grows as a result. After digging himself a massive hole, he really earns our esteem.

      Describing much of the story beyond that opening gambit -- Cat is forced to marry Andevai -- would require lots of spoilers. Some of the twists and turns were telegraphed early and often, while others caught me completely by surprise. In any case, I enjoyed the ride. I thought the writing was wonderful, really immersive, and I was amazed by how well the author switched registers between culture-clash Europe and the Spirit world, between slums and palaces, between summer and winter.

      Onto the sequel.

    • 3/5
      Originally posted on A Reader of Fictions.

      Oh, epic fantasy. I really shouldn't be reading any of it while trying to complete my massive book challenge, because every time I read one I lose ground. Still, I keep reading them, because I like them. Cold Magic proved to be especially slow, because it took me so long to really get into it. The writing and story was always good, but not enough to have me flipping the pages at high speed.

      The world building, so far as I understand it, is impressive. Unfortunately, much of it I didn't understand, largely the parts that intrigued me the most, the alternate history aspects. Usually, I don't have major comprehension issues with books, but I really could not piece together a timeline of what events happened when and how the history differed. Of course, it doesn't help that this takes place in regions and discusses times I didn't study much.

      The magic, though, made much more sense and was, pardon the pun, very cool. I suspect that later books might explain how the cold magic came into being, because that seems to be a real mystery, and it's so odd, since there doesn't seem to be any other magic on the earthly plane. The spiritual plane is so weird, and I hope there will be more exploration of it; I think there will be so that we can meet Cat's relatives.

      Part of why the book was slow for so long was that it lacked direction. While most epic fantasy revolves around a quest, this one does not. Thing happen, but they're not aimed toward a particular goal until a few hundred pages in. Once we learn what's going on, the pace picked up.

      As for the characters, I like Cat the best. I never took to her cousin and best friend, Bee, though I couldn't really say why, since she is sweet to Cat. Early on, Cat, as the oldest daughter of the Hassi Barahals is forced to wed a cold mage, Andevai. She goes along with it to protect her cousin and family, though she would rather not marry an utter stranger, and a cold one at that. Despite his handsomeness, Cat wants pretty much nothing to do with him and snarks at him constantly. She berates him with questions, calls him out when he acts like a jerk, and generally doesn't act like so many young heroines do when confronted with a handsome face.

      My very favorite thing about Cat? How much she eats. This girl can pack food away. You know how a lot of books forget about basic human needs like eating to focus on other things? Well, Elliott doesn't do that. Cat has a seriously healthy appetite, and after so many books about skinny, waifish, model-thin heroines, that was so refreshing. She's clearly a girl after my own heart.

      Surely, you will not be surprised to learn that there is a sort of romance building between Cat and Andevai. They have a nice slow burn, which grows from mutual disdain (totally my favorite romance pattern thanks to P&P). I am totally rooting for them, though I do not want them to rush together.

      In the last 200 pages or so, I was much more entranced by the story. The change came about the time Rory entered the scene. He's hilarious and I adore him. Though this one was slow-going and I can't say I loved it, I have higher hopes for the second book Cold Fire, which is a good thing since it's in my tbr pile.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable romp through a not-quite-Europe where early technology and magic meet in conflict. This book wasn't as polished nor the characters as enthralling as Kate Elliott's best, but Cold Magic still held my interest enough to make me look forward to the 2nd book in the Trilogy.

    • 5/5
      Fantasy meets steampunk meets alternate timeline meets Afro-Celtic empire. Where has this book been all my life? Forced suddenly into a marriage she wasn't expecting and doesn't want, Cat finds herself plunged in the middle of a political turmoil and a murder plot (with herself as the intended target). She flees her husband's family--while learning a few secrets about her own--in order to find and protect her cousin and save her own life. Strong characters, great worldbuilding, loved it.
    • 5/5
      Haven't ever read any other series by Kate Elliott, I am happy that I picked this up. This story had elements of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and the Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy, which are some of my favorite books of all time. Elliott was able to bring her interesting and unique world to life through descriptive scenes and well-written dialogue. I especially liked the romantic interest for Cat, our heroine, which Elliott slowly develops throughout the book. The author use of only a first person narrative led to a more engaging and realistic feel to the relationship as we see Andevai through Cat's eyes, leaving the reader experiencing the same questioning of his motives and true feelings. I found myself finishing this book in two sittings and immediately ordering the second book, Cold Fire. Definitely recommended for fans of steampunk, alternate historical and paranormal romance.
    • 4/5
      This is probably my favorite Kate Elliott book so far. Her doorstoppers often wear on me a bit by the end, and I sometimes have a hard time maintaining interest throughout, but this one definitely kept me interested the whole way through.