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nigellicus's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
5.0
Merrily versus Morris Dancers. And MURDER.
divapitbull's review against another edition
4.0
All of a Winter’s Night is another atmospheric installment in the Merrily Watkins series. The story telling is subtle and the horror when it comes is oftentimes more inferred than overt. I must admit that sometimes it goes over my head. I’m blaming it on being American. Case and point – Gomer and Lol in the churchyard – noticing something may be amiss and setting it to rights. Made perfect sense to me. Wasn’t batting an eye. And then suddenly people are talking about crimes and spiritual atrocities and here I thought it was a solid work ethic and attention to detail.
14 books in and it’s a given that a significant part of the enjoyment is visiting with characters you’ve emotionally invested in. Merrily and Lol are solid in their supportive and drama-free, if still somewhat on the down-low relationship. Lol’s in a fairly good place (for Lol) working on his music and Merrily is coming into her own with both the Day job *and* the Night Job. Or she would be if Bishop Innes wasn’t trying to dismantle deliverance and stick it to her at every possible turn.
As it turns out the Night Job sees almost as much action as the Day Job in Merrily’s neck of the woods. For example, one minute she’s performing a perfunctory funeral for Aiden Lloyd a young man cut down in a tragic accident and then 12 hours later she’s looking out the rectory window and it seems a band of creepy looking figures are dancing on his grave. Merrily can not catch a break. Next thing you know she’s embroiled in the middle of a generational feud related to modern rape of the land annihilation farming versus semi-pagan, spiritual, nurturing the land farming and greed that leads to murder. Then the rumors start flying and the bodies start piling up and Merrily and her spiritual investigation are on a parallel course with Frannie and Annie and their legal investigation until everything comes to a head.
What I liked:
1. Lol and the Border Morris Dancing – very cool to watch I googled it on youtube.
2. The possibility of Jane re-inventing Lucy Devenish’s Ledwardine Lore shop.
3. Merrily’s conversation with Paul the self-serving mole
4. Charlie Howe – as long as it doesn’t cause problems for Frannie and Annie (And Pierce right along with him).
5. The possibility of Eirion coming back into the picture.
6. Rajab Ali Khan – can he please join Merrily’s Scooby gang and become a regular character.
What I didn’t like:
1. 19 year old Jane annoys me. She seems rather immature and her coming of age angst and resulting relationship drama just seem….ridiculous. Luckily she seems to be pulling it together
2. Merrily and the police working parallel but not together. Missed the Merrily and Bliss comradery.
3. Frannie and Annie meeting with Charlie. Because it worked out so well the last time. I really like Bliss but I wanted to smack him upside the head – although I suppose ultimately it will be helpful to Annie.
14 books in and it’s a given that a significant part of the enjoyment is visiting with characters you’ve emotionally invested in. Merrily and Lol are solid in their supportive and drama-free, if still somewhat on the down-low relationship. Lol’s in a fairly good place (for Lol) working on his music and Merrily is coming into her own with both the Day job *and* the Night Job. Or she would be if Bishop Innes wasn’t trying to dismantle deliverance and stick it to her at every possible turn.
As it turns out the Night Job sees almost as much action as the Day Job in Merrily’s neck of the woods. For example, one minute she’s performing a perfunctory funeral for Aiden Lloyd a young man cut down in a tragic accident and then 12 hours later she’s looking out the rectory window and it seems a band of creepy looking figures are dancing on his grave. Merrily can not catch a break. Next thing you know she’s embroiled in the middle of a generational feud related to modern rape of the land annihilation farming versus semi-pagan, spiritual, nurturing the land farming and greed that leads to murder. Then the rumors start flying and the bodies start piling up and Merrily and her spiritual investigation are on a parallel course with Frannie and Annie and their legal investigation until everything comes to a head.
What I liked:
1. Lol and the Border Morris Dancing – very cool to watch I googled it on youtube.
2. The possibility of Jane re-inventing Lucy Devenish’s Ledwardine Lore shop.
3. Merrily’s conversation with Paul the self-serving mole
4. Charlie Howe – as long as it doesn’t cause problems for Frannie and Annie (And Pierce right along with him).
5. The possibility of Eirion coming back into the picture.
6. Rajab Ali Khan – can he please join Merrily’s Scooby gang and become a regular character.
What I didn’t like:
1. 19 year old Jane annoys me. She seems rather immature and her coming of age angst and resulting relationship drama just seem….ridiculous. Luckily she seems to be pulling it together
2. Merrily and the police working parallel but not together. Missed the Merrily and Bliss comradery.
3. Frannie and Annie meeting with Charlie. Because it worked out so well the last time. I really like Bliss but I wanted to smack him upside the head – although I suppose ultimately it will be helpful to Annie.
marite's review against another edition
3.0
Jeg er begeistret for de andre bøkene i denne serien, men denne slet jeg med. Å bruke en uke på å lese en Merrily Watkins-bok, sier sitt. Kanskje det går litt på tomgang for forfatteren? Merrily sliter med de samme problemene hun har hatt gjennom alle bøkene, Jane utvikler seg ikke til tross for at hun er blitt voksen, og selve plottet utvikles i overkant langsomt.
ciannait76's review against another edition
5.0
And she is back ladies and gentlemen! Finally, Merrily is back to her old self. The only thing I miss is not seeing more of Gomer.
judenoseinabook's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Fascinating look at rural traditions versus modernity.
Green men, greed, gross ambition, family feuds. It's all there.
Green men, greed, gross ambition, family feuds. It's all there.
skonyo's review against another edition
4.0
4 - Reading a book of Merrily Watkins is like going home . Put the kettle on , lit the fire put your woolen socks on and you are set to go.
hayesstw's review against another edition
4.0
I suppose one could sum it up by saying this this book is to morris dancing what [b:The nine tailors|126675|The Nine Tailors (Lord Peter Wimsey, #11)|Dorothy L. Sayers|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353285546s/126675.jpg|2795358] by [a:Dorothy Sayers|8734|Dorothy L. Sayers|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1519840173p2/8734.jpg] is to church bell ringing.
I looked at this book very carefully before buying it, to make sure that it was not [b:Midwinter of the spirit|317372|Midwinter of the Spirit (Merrily Watkins, #2)|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391314794s/317372.jpg|1779108] sneakily published under a different title, since they have republished old Phil Rickman books under new titles before, as a trap for the unwary.
It turned out, however, that I had not read this one before.
[a:Phil Rickman|182452|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1292252234p2/182452.jpg]'s early books were of the fantasy/horror genre, but he seems to have been moving in his more recent ones more towards the crime and detective genre. In this one, however, he seems to have been trying to give equal prominence, switching scenes between the Revd Merrily Watkins, Church of England Vicar of Ledwardine in Herefordshire, who is also the diocesan exorsist, but with the updated and rather twee title of "deliverance consultant", and Hereford detectives Annie Howe and Francis Bliss who do their detecting while trying to keep their affair secret from their colleagues.
It's a while since I've seen a new Phil Rickman book -- as I noted, the last one turned out to be a false alarm, mutton dressed as lamb. Perhaps I have rosy memories of his style, or perhaps his writing style has changed, but I found this one stylistically disappointing. I don't know whether is writing style has got worse, or whether I have just become more critical.
One of the problems is that he has sudden changes of scene, but the characters are only indicated by pronouns. So you have "he said" and "she said", but only halfway through the paragraph do you realise that the he and she are not the same people who were in the previous paragraph, and go back to the beginning and read it with different characters in mind.
In the first few chapters, in Particular, it looks as though Rickman has been reading the elementary text books on fiction writing that give advice to wannabe writers -- especially the advice to end every chapter with a cliffhanger. The problem is that for the first 15 chapters or so the build up to the cliffhanger falls flat in the next chapter, so that every chapter begins with an anticlimax. This becomes tiresome after a while. So one learns that people have been terrible things in a churchyard. It turns out to have been morris dancing.
I first learnt about morris dancing from the comic strip The Perishers, which appeared in the Daily Mirror back in the 1960s. The role of the morris men in the comic strip was never terribly clear, but they struck me as nostalgic old gits who were trying to keep alive imagined traditions of a Merrie England that had never existed. Twenty years later I saw them performing in real life in a series of church fetes in Pretoria, the ind of events announced on their posters as a "Fayre". I once made a video juxtaposing them with a group of Pedi women doing a folk dance in what is now Limpopo province, but was then called the Northern Transvaal. Two folk traditions, one local, the other imported.
Rickman tried to introduce morris dancing as though it was uncanny, spooky and scary, but in my experience, however, it was just quaint and nostalgic, and morris men no more sinister than people who liked going around ringing church bells.
As the book goes on it gets better, at least as far as the plot is concerned, and I don't think it would be too much of a spoiler to say that ultimately the villain turns out to be capitalism, especially as exemplified by property developers. In that it doesn't differ much from some of the other more recent Phil Rickman books.
I looked at this book very carefully before buying it, to make sure that it was not [b:Midwinter of the spirit|317372|Midwinter of the Spirit (Merrily Watkins, #2)|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391314794s/317372.jpg|1779108] sneakily published under a different title, since they have republished old Phil Rickman books under new titles before, as a trap for the unwary.
It turned out, however, that I had not read this one before.
[a:Phil Rickman|182452|Phil Rickman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1292252234p2/182452.jpg]'s early books were of the fantasy/horror genre, but he seems to have been moving in his more recent ones more towards the crime and detective genre. In this one, however, he seems to have been trying to give equal prominence, switching scenes between the Revd Merrily Watkins, Church of England Vicar of Ledwardine in Herefordshire, who is also the diocesan exorsist, but with the updated and rather twee title of "deliverance consultant", and Hereford detectives Annie Howe and Francis Bliss who do their detecting while trying to keep their affair secret from their colleagues.
It's a while since I've seen a new Phil Rickman book -- as I noted, the last one turned out to be a false alarm, mutton dressed as lamb. Perhaps I have rosy memories of his style, or perhaps his writing style has changed, but I found this one stylistically disappointing. I don't know whether is writing style has got worse, or whether I have just become more critical.
One of the problems is that he has sudden changes of scene, but the characters are only indicated by pronouns. So you have "he said" and "she said", but only halfway through the paragraph do you realise that the he and she are not the same people who were in the previous paragraph, and go back to the beginning and read it with different characters in mind.
In the first few chapters, in Particular, it looks as though Rickman has been reading the elementary text books on fiction writing that give advice to wannabe writers -- especially the advice to end every chapter with a cliffhanger. The problem is that for the first 15 chapters or so the build up to the cliffhanger falls flat in the next chapter, so that every chapter begins with an anticlimax. This becomes tiresome after a while. So one learns that people have been terrible things in a churchyard. It turns out to have been morris dancing.
I first learnt about morris dancing from the comic strip The Perishers, which appeared in the Daily Mirror back in the 1960s. The role of the morris men in the comic strip was never terribly clear, but they struck me as nostalgic old gits who were trying to keep alive imagined traditions of a Merrie England that had never existed. Twenty years later I saw them performing in real life in a series of church fetes in Pretoria, the ind of events announced on their posters as a "Fayre". I once made a video juxtaposing them with a group of Pedi women doing a folk dance in what is now Limpopo province, but was then called the Northern Transvaal. Two folk traditions, one local, the other imported.
Rickman tried to introduce morris dancing as though it was uncanny, spooky and scary, but in my experience, however, it was just quaint and nostalgic, and morris men no more sinister than people who liked going around ringing church bells.
As the book goes on it gets better, at least as far as the plot is concerned, and I don't think it would be too much of a spoiler to say that ultimately the villain turns out to be capitalism, especially as exemplified by property developers. In that it doesn't differ much from some of the other more recent Phil Rickman books.
shibamistress's review against another edition
4.0
Another fabulous entry into the Merrily Watkins series. I couldn't wait to read this one--it doesn't come out til April in the US--so I ordered it from the UK. It was worth it! A good story that engages contemporary issues, as always, and all our favorite characters are present. I hope it is not the end of the series: there is certainly room for more! But if it were, it would be a satisfying one, though everything is not tied up in this one, so I do hope for yet another Merrily book!
lisasf2f04's review
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5