Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by busybea
Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This is a funny little book. A love story, a love letter to the multitudinous tide of humanity, the plethora of possibilities, this book definitely gives you food for thought.
I absolutely love Marcus Sedgwick’s writing style - The Dark Horse was a formative book for me - but his writing always shines and flows best when his story is set in ancient times. Thus Midwinterblood, with its backwards chronology, only truly shone 75% of the way through. While the climax of Eric and Merle’s original lives is peak Marcus Sedgwick (the writing is breath-stealingly stunning), and I was really attached to Merle, and the various iterations of Eric and Merle were really interesting, unfortunately this story didn’t grasp me as much I thought it would from the premise and my previous Sedgwick reads.
Marcus Sedgwick is still a brilliant author: the writing is evocative, the story (stories?) intense. However, I just didn’t take to Eric and Merle as a bonded pair. If we had spent even a week longer (in-story) with them together at the beginning, the whole narrative would have felt more anchored. As it is, since their bond is the spine of the story, this sense of drifting through the ages with a pair I didn’t properly get to know at the beginning is why this book unfortunately fell a little flat for me.
I absolutely love Marcus Sedgwick’s writing style - The Dark Horse was a formative book for me - but his writing always shines and flows best when his story is set in ancient times. Thus Midwinterblood, with its backwards chronology, only truly shone 75% of the way through. While the climax of Eric and Merle’s original lives is peak Marcus Sedgwick (the writing is breath-stealingly stunning), and I was really attached to Merle, and the various iterations of Eric and Merle were really interesting, unfortunately this story didn’t grasp me as much I thought it would from the premise and my previous Sedgwick reads.
Marcus Sedgwick is still a brilliant author: the writing is evocative, the story (stories?) intense. However, I just didn’t take to Eric and Merle as a bonded pair. If we had spent even a week longer (in-story) with them together at the beginning, the whole narrative would have felt more anchored. As it is, since their bond is the spine of the story, this sense of drifting through the ages with a pair I didn’t properly get to know at the beginning is why this book unfortunately fell a little flat for me.