The Red Winter
The Red Winter is Cameron Sullivan’s debut novel, a historical fantasy which explores the legend of the Beast of Gévaudan. The Beast was an animal or animals who attacked and killed a number of people in the mid-1760s, leading to public terror and the formation by French authorities of a ‘great hunt’. Cameron dives into the many legends that surround the beast and creates a thoroughly blood-soaked and thrilling tale, as Sebastian, a skilled monster slayer who has tackled the beast before, receives news that the beast has returned to Gévaudan twenty years later, and he must revisit both the great hunt and his relationship with French nobleman Antoine, his estranged lover.
Sebastian is a terrifically realised character, dry, sardonic, jaded and playing host to Sarmodel, a witty but hungry demon: he is nevertheless devoted to Antoine despite the twenty years of silence between them. Sullivan’s narrative moves between different timelines: the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, the first great hunt when Sebastian and Antoine had tracked the beast through the harsh countryside of a French winter, and into the next generation as Antoine’s son pleads for help. There is a rich cast of characters both human and supernatural, and Sullivan brilliantly plays them against each other as Sebastian must control his demons; literally, while terrifically vile French nobles and clergy vie to destroy the beast and if possible rid France of other heretical creatures such as Sebastian himself. With shades of The Witcher and Interview with a Vampire, this is a werewolf tale not to be missed.
