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Red Winter

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Red Winter

By: Dan Smith
Narrated by: Nigel Carrington
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About this listen

Russia, 1920: Kolya has deserted his Red Army unit and returns home to bury his brother and reunite with his wife and sons. But he finds the village silent and empty. The men have been massacred in the forest. The women and children have disappeared.

In this remote, rural community the folk tales mothers tell their children by candlelight take on powerful significance and the terrifying legend of The Deathless One begins to feel very real. Kolya sets out on a journey through dense, haunting forests and across vast plains as bitter winter sets in, in the desperate hope he will find his family. But there are very dark things in his past - and there's someone, or something, on his trail....

©2013 Dan Smith (P)2014 Orion Publishing Group Crime Fiction Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Village Exciting Crime Red Army
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What did you like most about Red Winter?

I'm not sure how but the author and Narrator had me on side and carin about the character from the first chapter to last. A gripping journey.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Red Winter?

The chilling description of the first survivors. Described in vivid detail

Gripped from first to last and narrating excellent

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I came to this having read The Child Thief, which I enjoyed a lot. There are quite a few similarities with that predecessor: a troubled hero with a dark past travelling across a bleak, Revolutionary Soviet landscape, the pursuit by and of a faceless but terrifying enemy. In some ways there are too many similarities for my taste, but nonetheless this is a pacy, often old-fashioned adventure story. I almost think it is better than The Child Thief.

The author describes a brutal time in early Soviet history, but the descriptions of atrocity are kept to a minimum in favour of a traditional chase adventure. There is enough mystery and suspense to satisfy, and the denouement is not too contrived (as I felt maybe the end of previous book had been).

It is superbly performed by Nigel Carrington.

Bleak adventure

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