The Winter over by Matthew Iden is a spooky thriller that in some parts reminded me a bit of the film 'The Thing' . An alright read if you want a thriller set in the snow and ice.

I am fascinated by stories with this setting. Perfect atmosphere for psychological drama, violence and terror. While the premise was good and there were some scary moments, overall this story failed to conjure the bleak, foreboding backdrop that would have made this ace.

I was excited to read this – I'm a nerd for snowy books, and even though I've read several polar-set horror stories, there's always room for more.

And so my fatal flaw with this book is revealed. It's just like all the other polar horrors, but not quite as good. There's nothing really wrong with this book – the story trips along, the characters are distinct, the prose is serviceable. But there's nothing that special about it either. If you've never read a snowy horror and you really fancy one, this isn't a bad choice. But if you've ever read anything even slightly similar, there won't be any surprises for you here.

In the Shackleton South Pole Research Facility, the place is usually packed with staff and scientists during the summer months, but for 9 months of the year, when it's dark for months at a time and it's so cold outside that you could freeze to death in minutes, it's staffed with only a skeleton staff. It's called The Winter Over. Cass, a mechanical engineer has gone through the rigorous evaluation and is looking forward to 9 months of working and escaping the accident in her past. Working in such a stressful environment is hard enough but when one of their colleagues is found dead, and the heat and electricity start turning off and on, the staff at the station have to figure out what is going on before it's too late for all of them.

I have to say that the cover of this is stunning, very eye catching!! Once I saw the cover and read the synopsis I immediately added this to my list, and when it came on Netgalley I downloaded it and couldn't wait to start. And I must admit, I'm a little disappointed to be honest. The first half of the book was extremely slow and took a while for me to get through. I nearly gave up at one stage but I wanted to see if the story got better!!

Eventually it did pick up and I flew through the second half. Plot wise, I loved the idea of a thriller set in the South Pole because it's such a bleak and desolate setting and the author portrayed the isolation and horrible conditions perfectly. Imagine living in a place where if the heat goes out for any length of time you would have ice forming on your eyes!! I was shivering with the cold just thinking about it.

Character wise, I found the secondary characters needed to be fleshed out a little more, we don't really get a sense of who they are. Cass though was well written and developed and I liked her character a lot. She has baggage and I felt she grew a lot throughout the story. Initially she came across as an introvert but over the course of the story she became strong and willing to get to the bottom of things.

In all, this would have been a solid 5 stars if the first half of the book wasn't so slow and drawn out. I mean, the second half of the book was extremely fast paced and tense!! I still enjoyed the overall story and will definitely check out more from Matthew Iden.

Antarctica is such a perfect setting for a closed-room mystery that it is surprising no one has thought of it yet, but that’s ok, because Matthew Iden has got readers covered. Perfect for reading during these winter evenings, sitting by the fire, where you are SAFE.

I can’t say that I liked this book, even though I tried to. The opening was good, but the middle and ending were a let-down. I liked the main character of Cass and how she interacted with the crew, but the story was too out there to be believable. I found myself skipping pages and not really caring about what I missed.

I'll confess that I've got a soft spot for stories like this. Real or imagined, North or South Pole. I read everything I can find..everything. Mr. Iden did a damn fine job on this story. It hit all my scary places! I would love to go to the Antarctic for a winter over. This story had a good whodunit, while also having some gruesome deaths. Always a plus! The characters we're odd, quirky, with a few as crazy as a shithouse rat! Mostly I loved Cass and Biddi, who were strong women and fairly lovable. I would have liked to know what happened to Cass after she reported what had all gone on at Shackleton. Ah well...Yep, I'd recommend this book and author. Thanks to Thomas &Mercer, and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and sort of review this book.

The Winter Over

By Matthew Iden

Imagine a winter in the most isolated place in the world with forty others. Imagine no contact with the outside world for months on end.

Imagine when things go wrong, starting with a suspicious death, power failures, and crazy’s running around loose.

This is ‘The Winter Over’. Set in the Antarctic isolated base ‘Shackleton Research Base’, the plot follows Cass Jennings, a mechanic trying to escape her own past, as she stumbles through firstly a murder, then many other issues and problems that cripple the base. Never knowing who to turn to.

The story is well written, taking the reader in with a mixture of strong, but strange characters all facing their own demons. Coupled with a fast-moving plot.

An excellent read.

this was a very suspenseful story set in Antarctica during the winter. The US government has turned the Shackelford Research facility to a private company. Cass is the chief mechanic and is amazed she qualified to serve . When people start dying and the camp is being sabotaged Cass must dig deep to survive. When the killer is revealed at the end and the motivation for the mayhem is revealed it certainly was a surprise. I liked Cass and her determination to survive.

Really intriguing and impressive - characters are fully drawn and this story set in cold South Pole is exciting and unusual. First of all there is always that underlying sense that death is easy to fall into at any moment - and as days get more and more lengthy with winter months when no one can leave the Shackleton camp, it gets more deadly. There is a conspiracy going on and Cassie appears to be at its heart - we know something that none of the others know about her yet despite its overtones of spy realms, it is the most innocent and in the end redemptive move she could have made. Very surprising, very adept and remarkable in its way. (I suppose the only hesitancy I have is that as it becomes clear what's going on in the last chapter, it all becomes a bit contrived but momentum forward is so powerful I could ignore ...)

Book – The Winter Over
Author – Matthew Iden
Star rating - ★★★☆☆
No. of Pages – 352
Cover – Great!
POV – 3rd person, multi-POV
Would I read it again – No
Genre – Thriller, Mystery, Fiction


** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **



WARNING: deals with suicide, mental illness, murder and psychological torture.



This was a strange one for me. It's billed as a Thriller/Mystery novel, but I was neither thrilled or mystified. In fact, I found it all either a little boring, predictable or incredulous, which was a disappointment.

To start off with, I have to say that my 3 stars are for the ingenuity of the author to construct this idea and make it seem not only possible but to write it well and for the immense detail used to provide authenticity both to the location, the situation and the psychological logic behind everything that happens. Now, things got really crazy in the end, about the last 30% which is where I found it all a little hard to swallow, but everything that preceded that actually made a whole lot of sense within the situations and environment the author constructed.

However, despite beginning with the discovery of a body, the story didn't do much for over 50%. It was all everyday activity, the friendships and work-relationships, the T3 setting in and not much of anything else going on. None of those in charge even attempted to pretend that they were disturbed by the discovery of a dead body. I was left baffled as to why this issue was only addressed by one person – Cass – and no one else seemed to care. It made it difficult to understand what was happening or why. And when things did begin at the 55% mark, they became quickly too wild and incredulous for me to trust in or believe anymore. Some were never really explained to my satisfaction, either.

There was a huge amount of attention to detail – from the jobs, the aims, the location, to the life and experiences of what went on at the Research Facility – but the story really stagnated from the end of Chapter 1 to the 55% mark. It lacked excitement and anticipation. I also found that vital moments were completely glossed over and made me wonder why there was this multi-person POV when we didn't get to see half of what I, as the reader, wanted to read about. Some 'missing' scenes made sense later, once I knew what was happening, but there were others that were just missing for no reason or scenes that were included for no reason.

The POV's were far too many. Cass, Dave, Taylor, Anne, Hanratty, Leroy, Keene, Dr Ayres, Carla and Elise all had POV's when really, only about three of them were actually of any importance. Cass, Leroy and Keene, perhaps even Ayres were all important, but the rest of them could have been told in other ways or through observation or conversation, rather than spending pages exploring scenes and events that had no importance or real bearing on the story or the reader's understanding of it. The constant switch of POV also made it hard to keep track of who was who and what they did.

Quite honestly, the big revelation that came at 62% was actually obvious to me at 24%. I knew exactly what was happening well before Cass even suspected it or discussed it with Sasha at 51%.

By 31% only one person had died and no one had really cared, bothered to investigate or done anything about it. In fact, there had been one action, interesting scene that only happened because there was a strange person running from Cass that shouldn't have been there. Other than that, nothing really happened until 55% when the whole psychological aspect really took off.

My problem is all the unanswered questions. Did Sikes know what was happening? What happened to Leroy? Was he taking placebo tablets or was he taking something to drive him insane? Did he murder his sister or runaway before he could? What did the authorities think about it all when Cass finally told them what happened? Did they believe her, was she considered insane or did they put it down to the condition they found her in and her psychological background? Did she ever get together with Sasha? Was Cass so traumatized that she distanced herself from the Research Facility? Did she finally settle into a life and career, knowing that she wasn't entirely to blame? What ever happened to Sheryl?

~

Unfortunately, overall it did nothing for me. I found it predictable and a little sensational in places, but it was really nothing more than an adult version of the concepts of The Maze Runner, in a different environment and with less action. It wasn't scary enough to be a horror and it wasn't psychologically challenging or had enough anticipation to be a thriller, for me, either.

I found the solution to the why of what was happening obvious, as well as the perpetrator – the elusive Observer – so there was no mystery element either. The fact that it ended abruptly and with no resolution (no fallout for the company, no explanation of what happened next or what happened to Cass etc) didn't help. It left me feeling like there was a huge chunk missing that could have taken up the place of the first 50% which didn't do anything for the story at all.

Sadly, not my cup of tea.

~

Favourite Quote

““If we coddle them now, how will they act in a true crisis? 'That which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.'”
Keene's laughter came out as a high-pitched bark. “The man who said that wound up in an insane asylum.””

This as a great book, took me a few chapters to get into it but then i was hooked.

I'm a sucker for all books about Antarctica so this was a natural pick for me. Generally, it filled the bill- it's got info on living conditions, research, and so on, as well as a mystery and thriller component. That said, I felt for about half the book as though I had dropped into a series as Cass, in particular, seemed to have a missing back story I should have known. I also wasn't happy with the end, which I think went over the top into surrealism. It is a page turner and it is satisfying. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I had not read Iden before but I'll look for him again.

A GREAT READ!! The Winter Over is so descriptive and realistic, that one has to stop and remember that there isn't a real Shackleton Station! The author outdoes himself in writing about how life wintering over in Antarctica truly would be. From start to finish.. the reader will be flippin' as fast as they can to find out what is going to happen to Cass. She is the main character.. she's survived some difficulties in her past.. and is seeking to move beyond.. by moving to the bottom of the world.

The tunnels that one reaches from the "Beer Can" reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinson's, "Antarctica" novel. Only.. with a little more ooompha! So many things go right.. but, oh so many things go wrong. The station manager is a total jerk.. who really is just a scared bully.. afraid of being outed for what he really is.. Most folks have worked with at least one person in their lifetime like him.. and the reader will find themselves hoping that he'll get his in the end. No spoilers though..

Grab a blankie, a cup of hot chocolate.. and get ready to curl up on the couch and dive in! Can you imagine.. a night that lasts nearly six months? I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to feel that he/she has been on an Antarctica adventure.. wintering over!