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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
Beautifully written, futuristic - sort-of, time travel-sort of, love story-sort of. Reminded me a bit of Time Traveler's Wife. Great narrator -- Julian Rhind-Tutt.
The high rating comes from how atmospheric this book is. It's billed as a young adult book, but some of the stories are rather chilling. There are seven interlinked short stories that travel backward in time, from a near-future reporter doing a story on a mysterious island, to an archeological dig on that same island, to a fighter pilot during WWII stranded there, to a nineteenth century ghost story, to vikings and the walking dead and a bloody sacrifice.
The end was quite grim for a YA book too. I'm not sure I liked the ending of the story, but I won't spoil it for you, you'll have to decide for yourself.
The end was quite grim for a YA book too. I'm not sure I liked the ending of the story, but I won't spoil it for you, you'll have to decide for yourself.
Add me to the list of loved it reviews. And as someone who read The Golden Bough in my adolescence, add to my critical opinion that this is great stuff a personal conviction that this was written just for me.
very interesting, different (in a good way) story. Our library has it marked as horror which is partially accurate but not entirely.
Some books you can only appreciate when you get to the end and are like "oh my gosh, the author totally set up that ending so cleverly" and then you flip through the pages seeing where hints and omens were carefully placed.
Thus is it so with Midwinterblood. The fun with this, as it was for me in Cloud Atlas, is getting past the "what's going on!" first part (first "life") and getting to the subsequent parts (lives) where you already know to look for the hints you skipped over in the first part.
This is a short read. It chronicles the lives of two lovers who meet again and again on Blessed Island, an isolated place of the far North where a rare orchid grows that seems to have some mysterious effect on the inhabitants.
It starts off just a bit slow, and some of the lives we needed to spend a little more time in so that we could appreciate and connect with the characters as they were in that life, but otherwise, an atmospheric, slightly creepy, and interesting read.
Like a slice of dark chocolate tart where you uncover each layer of cream and sponge cake and enjoy anew the same flavors permeating each chapter as you follow the story to its ultimate conclusion...which is its beginning, actually.
Thus is it so with Midwinterblood. The fun with this, as it was for me in Cloud Atlas, is getting past the "what's going on!" first part (first "life") and getting to the subsequent parts (lives) where you already know to look for the hints you skipped over in the first part.
This is a short read. It chronicles the lives of two lovers who meet again and again on Blessed Island, an isolated place of the far North where a rare orchid grows that seems to have some mysterious effect on the inhabitants.
It starts off just a bit slow, and some of the lives we needed to spend a little more time in so that we could appreciate and connect with the characters as they were in that life, but otherwise, an atmospheric, slightly creepy, and interesting read.
Like a slice of dark chocolate tart where you uncover each layer of cream and sponge cake and enjoy anew the same flavors permeating each chapter as you follow the story to its ultimate conclusion...which is its beginning, actually.
adventurous
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
This took me back to my childhood when my Mom used to read me fairytales :((((
I don't honestly know how I feel about this book. I think there was a lot of potential but it really just fell short for me. I found it terribly complicated and confusing, much more so than was necessary. I felt like more should have been explained or elaborated on. I liked the creepy factor and the sacrafices and the different lives but it was just too all over the place. From the very beginning i felt as though i landed in the middle of the book, and i kept reading bc i was hoping things would become clearer, but they never really did. I also don't really see this as a young adult novel which, according to my library district, its labeled as. I think it was just labeled that way because the author has done YA novels in the past. I am also very glad this was not picked as one of this year's Battle of the Books for my library.
Can't stop thinking about this book so promoting it up to 5 stars instead of 4.