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“The Red Winter” by Cameron Sullivan

02 Thursday Apr 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

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If we remove the Hundred Years’ War and the French Revolution, this is a typical, clichéd witch-and-demon romance book, riddled with all the genre’s tropes, and worsened by its attitude towards women.

Which makes you wonder what the point was of making this a historical novel if a) it was going to distort true history to this extent, and b) the Fantasy elements are so dominant that the history is just noticeable. This could easily have been (and should’ve been) pure Fantasy; it would’ve worked much better.

I don’t mind real history being mixed with fantasy; Historical Fantasy is one of my favourite genres, so my objection isn’t to “mixing” them but to “how” they’re mixed. A very important point to consider for what I’m about to say. And be warned: this review contains major spoilers.

I don’t know about you, but I draw a line in the sand at taking a real historical tragedy and giving it a supernatural origin. A demonic one, in fact. Others might not care and will resort to the typical “it’s just fiction!” After all, it’s not their culture, it’s not their country, and who cares about the lives of anonymous French peasants from three centuries ago who perished by the Beast of Gévaudan? In fiction, anything goes, right?

Well, not for me. I’m very clear that historical tragedies shouldn’t be twisted to suit a novelistic construction to make an author money. I always keep in mind that real people suffered and died in those events, and using their tragedy by taking advantage of the passage of time and the “a million deaths is a statistic” mentality is questionable.

It’s worth mentioning that even back in the Beast’s time, in the 1700s, there were already speculations about its supernatural identity; there were rumours that the Beast was a werewolf, a demon, someone possessed, etc. But those were superstitions of some people at that time, because people always talk and speculate and are conspiracy theorists, and not verifiable realities. In The Red Winter, however, those are “realities” that actually happen.

This isn’t the first book to reimagine the Beast of Gévaudan as a supernatural entity, I’ve read at least three books with this same plot premise, one of them was a “Beauty and the Beast” retelling (so you can see why I came to pick this book up), all fantasy. But this one is the worst in its interpretation of the true event.

Why, you might ask? Well, because:

  1. It portrays Jehanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) as possessed. The visions she had that drove her to become The Maid and heroine of France during the Hundred Years’ War are from a demon deceiving her by posing as an archangel with a divine message. In other words, the reason England tried and executed her is true in this version of history. (Strong anti-French bias here: keep in mind that the author is Australian and favours the English side of history.)
  • The “archangel” that deceives her and ultimately causes her death, as well as the massacres of civilians and soldiers during the war, is the Roman god Mars, who is actually a demon masquerading as a god that has existed under different names throughout history. (Again, strong anti-French and pro-English bias: the Hundred Years’ War was political; the massacres and war crimes committed by both sides were purely human, and attributing both the massacres and the French victories to a demon and a possessed woman exonerates England from their own crimes. And let’s not even talk about calling a Roman god a “demon.”)
  • Joan of Arc’s lieutenant, the infamous Gilles de Rais, is also possessed by the demon Mars, committing all his crimes under his influence, and therefore his trial and conviction are justified by his possession being real. (Once again: the crimes of a real person who most likely didn’t have a fair trial due to politics and aristocratic interests are attributed to demonic possession.)
  • The Beast of Gévaudan is the god/demon Mars using humans and animals to cause chaos and suffering simply because Mars is the god of war and enjoys death and destruction, no other reason given. This part isn’t unusual, it’s the most common element in retellings of the Beast, but what follows is unique to this book and very problematic.
  • The seeds of the French Revolution were sown in Gévaudan because… well, because the local people drank water from a mountain stream contaminated by the demon Mars, which made them violent and led them to attack the Baron and the Bishop who governed the region. Yes, poverty, hunger, and injustice are cited as reasons for the peasant revolt, but the trigger was the water, a horcrux of Mars. (Does the author realise how disturbing it is to suggest that a revolutionary movement in which people sought to improve their living conditions had “demonic” origins? It takes someone truly shameless to even suggest this, I would think.

Also, in an interview, the author said he researched the French aristocracy’s decadent life from a novel, “Dangerous Liaisons,” to get a feel for how the nobility at the time were. Look, it’s one of my all-time favourites and the reason I have this username of Marquise, but this novel was written by a pro-Revolution military grunt who had a conflict of interests here as he was advisor to the pro-Revolution Philippe Égalité, duc d’Orléans, so you couldn’t have chosen a more biased book to “research” the French nobility, it’s not a documentary.)

  • By the end, when Sebastian is reminiscing about these adventures, Napoleon is mentioned and again linked to the demonic influence of Mars because Napoleon used Roman symbolism. In other words, the Napoleonic Wars also have their cause in demonic influence. (I repeat: how is it that no one sees this blatant anti-French bias of this Anglo-Saxon author who practically attributes all the milestones of French history to demons?)

Now you understand why I think it should’ve been pure Fantasy if the author wanted to openly play fast and loose with a historical tragedy. In this interview (https://bookstr.com/article/cameron-sullivan-on-love-legend-history-and-horror/), Cameron Sullivan said that the most important thing in writing these twists on real history was not to change the outcome. That’s not possible, I’m afraid. If you change the ORIGIN and CAUSE of a historical event, the RESULT will inevitably have to change as well. You can’t have one without the other. The Butterfly Effect is set in motion.

But this book tries to have its cake and eat it too, since in an effort to avoid altering the outcome of history as it actually happened, the author creates internal consistency flaws: the characters act oddly, scenes are dropped or abruptly changed, and footnotes are overused to explain what should have happened on-page.

Endnotes are the magic wand waved whenever the author needs to “fix” a logical flaw or fill gaps in the worldbuilding. They were supposed to be humorous asides to elicit laughs, but after about three chapters, it becomes clear they’re just a crutch.

Now that I’ve listed the parts of history that are problematically represented in this book, let’s move on to the plot points that are equally problematic, if not lacking in good internal logic:

  1. The author described the M/M relationship in this book as “romantic,” and the book’s blurb also describes it as “a tragic love story.” Forgive me, but . . . where is the romance and the love story?

Because if that refers to Sebastian/Antoine, there’s not much of a love story and nothing romantic about it. It’s more like lust at first sight (even Sarmodel scolds Sebastian for thinking with his breeches), because otherwise it’s incomprehensible why Sebastian loves Antoine. There’s no solid reason for a thousand-plus-year-old witch to fall so madly in love with a pretty-faced fool. Basically, Antoine is a pretty boy, they go hunting together, and they start having sex in the woods like idiotic nymphs whilst “hunting” the Beast.

And speaking of nymphs, these two have a threesome with a naiad in her pond. Because, well, because the naiad is a horny Rumpelstiltskin. I wonder if LGBTQ+ authors aren’t ashamed of perpetuating the stereotype of the gay/bisexual who sleeps with anything that has a pulse.

  • If the “forbidden love story” is Sebastian/Sarmodel . . . Oh boy, better not. Because this relationship is deeply toxic and rapey.

Yes, exactly that: rapey. Or worse than that: child grooming. Why? Because Sarmodel possessed Sebastian when he was 11 years old or so, and for millennia he has been living as a parasite in Sebastian’s body. They call each other “my love,” which is disgusting when you consider that Sarmodel has basically been grooming Sebastian for centuries. And on top of that, Sarmodel rapes Sebastian.

There’s a scene where Sarmodel and Sebastian have sex that could be interpreted as dub-con if you’re feeling generous, but it’s non-con because Sebastian clearly says no, and Sarmodel persists until Sebastian gives in.

I ask again: aren’t LGBTQ+ authors ashamed that on top of contributing to the harmful always-horny stereotype for their community, they’re also making their queer characters into sexual abusers?

  • To top off the consent issues, this book engages in slut-shaming of female characters. It’s not just the succubus Livia, because being a succubus, it’s obvious she wants to sleep with anyone: that’s her nature, she can’t help it. But both Sebastian and Sarmodel insult and denigrate her for who she is. Sebastian punishes her for “disobeying” and sleeping round on duty, and Sarmodel outright calls her a “slut.” And this from a libertine professor that describes himself as “a tomcat” and a horny demon with boundary issues, yet the author doesn’t criticise them for that, whilst he portrays Livia like a whore for the LOLs.

Besides Livia, the author also mocks Joan of Arc’s virginity with the excuse that her tribunal were obsessed with her intact “cherry” (what a misogynistic way to call it), and he also mocks Cécile, the herbalist that has a witch-familiar that transforms into her lover at night. And let’s not even talk about Dayane the naiad asking for payment in sex.

The women in this book are treated in a sexist way, and this isn’t due to the mores of the time: we’re seeing this through Sebastian’s eyes, who knows better.

  • I’ve already mentioned that endnotes are used to hand-wave worldbuilding and internal logic problems, now I’m going to talk about a specific aspect for which they are overused: the lore of angels and demons, borrowed from Christianity but modified to authorial liking. And this modification to his liking has caused problems that no one else seems to have noticed. Let’s look at some:
  • In this world, God is “asleep.” But then how and why do the archangels follow his commands? They can’t lift a finger unless God commands them to. (This is probably a lie from Sarmodel that Sebastian believes, I think.)
  • In this world, Satan doesn’t exist because God literally “ate” him. But then how and why do the demons still exist? Satan is their leader; with the commander dead, the army is dead. It’s that simple: if Satan is destroyed, so are the demons and monsters, who also cannot live without him for the same reason that angels cannot live without God.
  • In this world, neither Heaven nor Hell exist, according to Sebastian and Sarmodel, and souls and spirits are “consumed” when they die. This sounds like Annihilationism, but the problem is that only this one demon and his human host believe it because Archangel Michael practically confirms that Heaven exists.

The religious basis for angels and demons in this book is very inconsistent and made to suit the plot’s whims with little regard for consistency.

  • The same goes for Catholic relics and exorcism. They work or stop working depending on what suits the plot. For example, holy water and blessings have no effect on Sebastian or Sarmodel, but elsewhere in the book it says that exorcism would affect Mars.

And the same goes for the powers of the archangels and demons. In the Christian theology the author draws from, archangels are more powerful than demons, and Archangel Michael as their commander is the most powerful of all, yet in this book he’s powerless on demand; for example, when he can’t detect where Sarmodel and Sebastian are, whilst these two can see him even though they’re less powerful; or when the archangel is affected by silver bullets like a common vampire.

It’s incomprehensible to me, really. I understand that perhaps the author isn’t familiar with Catholic spiritual lore, which is very complex and convoluted, but he should at least have bothered to be consistent with his own invented additions to this lore.

  • It’s also unclear why Sebastian doesn’t seem to know what Sarmodel is and what he himself is, what powers his demon has, etc. Strange, because these two have been together for millennia, and are lovers, but they don’t seem to know each other well. With all of Sebastian’s education and intelligence, he should already know who he is, but it’s 2013 in the epilogue and he still doesn’t know a bloody thing. He’s all “I’m unique because I’m unique, and I don’t know why I’m unique,” and that’s it. We’re supposed to accept all of that like the endnotes, without question.

My concluding impression is that the author wanted to write a kind of queer Indiana Jones solving supernatural cases from the past, and broadly speaking, you can see that The Red Winter was trying to be that. But it fell short, very short.

I can see that that more stories are going to be published in the future because this book ends on a note implying there will be more installments. I can’t say I will be reading more about these characters, though. It has left a bad taste in my mouth that this appropriated the history and folklore of a country that has historically been a fierce competitor to the Anglo-Saxon world to which its author belongs, and used it in such an insensitive way for commercial purposes.

“The Wolf and His King” by Finn Longman

27 Tuesday Jan 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

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Finally, I have found a modern troubadour in these unromantic and rotten times that has done the old Breton lais justice. The Wolf and His King is how a roman de chevalerie should be retold.

I must confess that before this book I hadn’t read The Lays of Marie de France, which contains the knightly fairy tale this reimagined. I have owned the Penguin Classics edition for a long while, but spoilt for choice as we are in our modern world where books are abundant, I had let it languish someplace all dusty and forgotten. Out of memory, no plans to read it, one more Classic for my collection of knightly stories, my second favourite motif of all time. And when I saw this book’s release in paperback last year, the promotional blurb had made me think it was some sort of Little Red Riding Hood retelling but with men in shining armour and werewolves instead of Red and Big Bad Wolf.

I had never paid any attention to Bisclavret, and beyond the name I don’t think I knew its plotline before, it wasn’t one of the lais that I was familiar with by cultural osmosis and from mentions in other knightly books I had read. You could say I went into The Wolf and His King with no other expectations than a good knight’s tale. And it didn’t disappoint, I’m pleased to report. But one thing intrigued me…

Where had Finn Longman got the idea to retell a Medieval epic poem as a gay love story?

I do have reasons to be cautious with authors going for LGBTQ+ themes in stories set in the remote past, and not because LGBTQ+ people didn’t exist in those times—they always have—but because people from other periods didn’t share our concept of sexual identity and modernist transformations of old stories tend to result in unfortunate portrayals of characters supposedly from a different time & mores that are more likely to belong in a RuPaul drama than in the Middle Ages. It’s tricky to pull off minority representation right in a setting that is simply alien to our modern mindset.

Thus I decided to dust up my copy of The Lays of Marie de France and find out by myself.

As I read these lais (epic poems/songs with knightly and hero stories), all twelve of them, my mood alternated between Sansa Stark’s starry-eyed “There are true knights. All the stories can’t be lies” and Sandor Clegane’s cynical “Florian and Jonquil? A fool and his cunt” (begging your mercy to excuse his language, he’s not a housetrained dog). At first, it didn’t appear to be any different to the tonnes of knightly tales and poems by male troubadours: all these perfect knights, the best warriors, the most handsome, the most virtuous, the tallest, the strongest, the most creative at killing people a hundred ways with one blow, etc. Three lais in, and I was already bored and bracing myself for the dullest knighthood I had had the misfortune to read about.

And then, the fourth lai galloped in and swept me up and on for a ride.

As I read the tale of the wolf-man Bisclavret, my mood went from Oh to Oh-oh to Oh! I can now confidently assert that Finn Longman didn’t make it up out of thin air and with zero basis for his interpretation. Even a scatterbrained little chit of a girl like me with a garbage gaydar that’s more broken than useful can see what Mr Longman saw.

Bisclavret shifted my focus and made me see the rest of the lais—and this retelling—under a different light. Maybe it’s that the person authoring these was a poetess, but after the fourth lai I couldn’t but notice the same thing I had noticed about the poetry by the Countess de Diá, my first encounter with knightly epic poems by a woman: all troubadours male and female write the knights the same way, but the female troubadours write the ladies differently. In Madame de France’s lais, all the men are cookie-cutter, to borrow an American idiom, but the women…

Oh, the women! You have saints and sinners here, not just unattainable semi-goddesses for the knight to long for at a safe distance; there’s adulteresses planning to murder their husband to marry their lover, ladies in a polyamorous relationship with four knights (what did she have for breakfast for such stamina? I want to know!), gossipers that claim having twins means you slept with two chaps at once (I knew biology classes didn’t exist back then, but…), a noble wife that leaves her husband when she sees he loves another, a scorned woman who calls the knight that reject her advances gay (a millennium later, we haven’t changed in this sense, eh?), and the surprise of surprises… a woman dared write a story that is obviously male-on-male love.

I suppose we girls have always been into slash fics.

What a sweet love story this one was. I know many girls who are into M/M fiction prefer their stories with more jalapeños, but not me. I loved the quietness and the unassuming nature of the relationship between the Baron and the King. I loved that the King falls first whilst it takes the Baron an age and a half to realise his feelings. I loved that the King actually rules and has a life outside what his Wolf does. I loved that there’s a reason for the betrayal beyond Evil-for-the- LOLs.

And above all, I loved that the world, although imaginary and not real 12th Century Bretagne (as the author himself is quick to clarify) does feel real and authentic. The King, although aware of his inclination towards men and not ladies, isn’t an Identity Politics Victim; he doesn’t call himself “gay” and is aware that sooner or later he will have to marry a woman for throne and kingdom, and he doesn’t wring limp-wristed hands over the Baron doing the same. He pines with dignity, fully acknowledging what he can and can’t do to satisfy his desires in a way that befits his social standing. And that is accurate for a nobleman from the time.

Longman didn’t neglect to show realistic glimpses into what kind of court and kingdom this one could have been, as much as it’s possible to show a society through very limited POVs (only the King and the Baron are narrators, so don’t expect expansive worldbuilding). There’s even a confessor that is aware of the King’s sexuality, and religion is given its proper place as it should be in such a society, with prayers in Latin and faith struggles. You can tell Longman does know its subject and the time period he is emulating.

I love this kind of accuracy that’s not required but is made an effort for out of love for art and history. I mean, this is a fictional Brittany in a fictional period of its history with fantastical elements aplenty (the source lais have shapeshifters and magic like fairy tales), and Finn Longman could’ve made up as much ahistorical or anachronistic stuff as he wanted, such is the freedom of writing Fantasy as opposed to Historical Fiction, but he chose to make his novel as plausible within its historical context as he knew how.

Are there changes from the Lai of Bisclavret to The Wolf and His King? Of course, that’s what retellings are for, but none major or that would go against what is plausible within the confines drawn by the lai. The plot of the poem is short and straightforward, and there’s enough room for padding it up for a full novel, and there is where changes and differences appear. For example, the chaplain is an invented character, and the wife’s lover from the poem has a different sort of connection in the novel, and the wife’s portrayal is kinder than in the poem, her motives more nuanced. And, overall, both the Baron and the King are more fleshed out and have a more defined personality, especially the King, who was my favourite character.

Naturally, every knight has a dragon to slay. I believe the biggest book dragon for most readers will be the writing, which didn’t bother me in the least even though I admit it was odd and unusual. The two POVs here are each written in a distinct style: one is in Second Person present tense (the “You” chapters) and the other alternates between Third Person Limited (the “Him” chapters) and First Person (the versified chapters). That could make reading it in a smooth fashion rather challenging, and although I got used to this mishmash of styles rapidly, that won’t be the case for others. It has to be exceptional bad writing for me to be bothered by narration styles, and for me this was simply a cute authorial quirk, but there’s people for whom the simple oddity and unfamiliarity with a writer’s style is enough to be kicked out of immersion.

The pace of the Wolf phase is what would bother me a bit instead. The King, my favourite narrator, worked so much better contrasted with the Baron, because his quieter, more reflective tone was a counter to the other man’s quicker step, lady problems, and overall more macho-man lifestyle. In my mind, the King was the “lady” to the Baron that was the “knight.” The Baron was more imperfect as a person, more flawed, you can even see it coming that he will have his share of blame for the Wolf phase, and you can see more of the villain’s side and motives through his POV. But when the Wolf phase arrives, that counter is gone, and the world feels more sterile and the King is a tad too perfect in isolation, the pace of the story feels faster and more summed-up without a narrator on the other side, and it can feel like the Big Trouble is solved too quickly, the Bad Guys are punished expediently, and everything is right again, all seen from one side only.

I also wasn’t a fan of the Count’s son plotline. What was that in here for? To make us Bisclavret-or-bullet shippers shake fists at that interloper for stealing time and space in the King’s life, probably. But thank goodness that there was no triangle, I would’ve volunteered this book to my cat for shredding practice if that had happened.

Longman gives me hope for more stories of this kind, as there’s some retellings coming up that also have M/M twists on old stories and legends that I dare hope will be handled as skillfully and tastefully. Will he ever undertake another of the lais for a future book? I don’t know, but there’s at least one more lai that could be queered up (enough hints, though not as blatant as in Bisclavret) if he were so inclined. I have many questions for the author, maybe I’ll be fortunate enough to have them answered one day. For now, I’m very happy with this story, that has won the Best Retelling of 2025 title from us.

I received a copy of the Deluxe Limited Edition releasing today via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.