A review by rnmott
Winter's End by Jean-Claude Mourlevat

1.0

I really, really liked this story in the beginning. It took place in a boarding school with harsh ways and torture-like punishments. Though, in my opinion, the author quickly led the main characters away from this interesting setting to a new one that wasn’t as riveting. The characters were intriguing, and government opposition took a new spin on a book that I previously believed would be shallow. But while I liked this book for these reasons, the writing often became dull and flat. I’m not sure if this was just the way the author wrote it or some descriptions were lost in the translation. After reading sections I would become confused and I later realized that I kind of skimmed sections because they became boring, which is never a good sign for a book. Other than slow sections and ones that weren’t strictly necessary, I liked the underlying tones this book had, especially the ones that I hadn’t expected. Maybe if the author had spent more time delving into the saddened life of the boarding schools students (instead of their lives outside of it) I would have liked it more. Either way, 3 stars for entertaining me enough to get through to the end.