"ORIGINAL dark-ish fantasy with a great romantic subplot"

It is a dark and different world for Mina Cole. A slave in an industrial mill, she holds a secret that even she doesn't quite understand. But when brutality is unleashed on her fellow mill workers and friends, what Mina really is can no longer be hidden.

Mina is a half-breed, a woman with fae powers that are damned by the society in which she lives. She recognizes that prejudice, not only among her friends, but also within herself. She realizes the only way to face her own inner demons is to better understand them. She seeks out Duncan, an older man, crippled in an accident long ago, who is an underground mentor for the fae. Under Duncan's tutelage she grows, not only in her powers, but also as a person, and as a woman.

Duncan knows that the brash, cocky Mina may be not only his greatest student, but also his greatest fear. Not only in that he could lose his heart to her; but that the fae and half-fae world may well change because of the powers he has helped Mina hone. In trying to save her, Duncan may have given her the ability to destroy not only herself, but also all those like her. Including Duncan, himself.

WINTER'S ORPHANS is a superb ORIGINAL dark-ish fantasy with a great romantic subplot. Mina, the heroine, is gutsy, flawed, cocky and sincere. Duncan, the hero, is intense, dedicated and torn. It's a May-December situation but it's much much more than that. It's a tale of dark magic, of age- old revenge and totally original world-building in Corvidae's setting of Niune. It's fantasy - and superb fantasy - first, and romance second. Keep that in mind. This is not a romance novel where the characters coincidentally wear pointed ears. This is REAL, flawlessly written fantasy with a grabber romance subplot. I loved the book.

Linnea Sinclair aka Megan Sybil Baker © Copyright 2002
for ParaNormal Romance Reviews

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Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted April 18, 2002

Also in eBook format: ISBN 1931696063 (September 2001)

Summary

At the dawn of Niune's Industrial Age, the Seelie Court has a heartless half-human aristocracy that annihilates any glimmer of fae power holds the kingdom in an iron fist.

Ignorant of her own dark birthright, Mina Cole is a factory slave whose gifts cannot be suppressed. In a moment of terror, she betrays her heritage to the hunters, and her only hope for survival lies in the hands of a man crippled in body and soul.

One terrible night thirty-five years ago, Duncan RiDahn lost both his love and the use of his legs to the hunters of the Seelie Court. Into Duncan's web of regret comes Mina, whose dark strength both alarms and attracts him. Against his better judgment, he teaches her to survive in a world that loathes winter magic, the force of shadow and black waters.

But the greatest danger may not spring from the Seelie Court, for Mina wields a terrible power. Unleashed, her rage possesses the awful promise of transformation, and when Mina wills, dark things walk. And there is no guarantee that Mina, so long an impotent slave of the streets, knows anything of mercy.

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