A more condensed version of this review appeared in an issue of School Library Journal:
Every year Winter tears through the near-perpetual Summer of Alderland for six brutal weeks. It brings chilling cold, monstrous winterghasts, and dangerous storms that can appear anywhere–often with disastrous consequences.
In a modern society driven by magic, the country lives in fear of the next cataclysm where only the strongest Living Wand bound to Summer magic and the next Chosen One will be able to defend the land from Winter’s threats.
With a limited number of wands waiting to be bound to new magicians, competition is always fierce among ambitious students keen to make their marks in Aldrish society and rise beyond the ranks of lowly hedge witches. When Valmordion awakens for the first time in living memory, it marks the approach of the next–and potentially most dangerous–cataclysm and the call for a new Chosen One.
Domenic Barrow–a boy shrouded in tragedy and a bad reputation he wears like a shield–is horrified when he is Chosen. Ellery Caldwell, who turned her own tragic history and raw potential into armor, is a much more likely candidate. Until she creates the first Winter wand in history making the duo an unprecedented Chosen Two. But only time will tell if they’re allies meant to fight th cataclysm together or rivals on opposite sides in a generations-long struggle in A Fate So Cold (2025) by Amanda Foody and C. L. Herman.
A Fate So Cold is the first book on Foody and Herman’s new duology. Chapters alternate between Ellery and Domenic’s perspectives. Most main characters are cued as white.
Complex protagonists and their mixed feelings about their destinies give lie to the comparatively superficial world building that never fully reconciles the existence of seasonal magic alongside modern technology. The push and pull between the protagonists is similarly uneasy as Domenic and Ellery (and readers) try to figure out how they are both supposed to save Alderland. And if that’s what the prophecy is actually asking of them.
A Fate So Cold is an engaging if sometimes predictable interpretation of the Chosen One archetype and its related tropes.
Possible Pairings: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, Of Flame and Fury by Mikayla Bridge, Draw Down the Moon by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, The Never Tilting World by Ron Chupeco, Winter, White, and Wicked by Shannon Dittenmore, The Darkening by Sunya Mara, Heir of Storms by Lauryn Hamilton Murray, Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes, A Ruinous Fate by Kylie Smith
Miss Print 