Midwinter Blood by Marcus Sedgewick
Nov. 29th, 2011 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
”I will live seven times
and I will look for you
and love you in each life.
Will you follow?”
In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain.
Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a King and his Queen were tragically torn apart. Their souls search to be reunited as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire, but only a bloody sacrifice will rekindle their true love.
It’s 2073 and Eric Seven is a journalist visiting the remote Swedish island of Blessed to investigate claims that no one there ages and the local population do not have children. Initially welcomed by the community, he strikes up a friendship with a young local woman called Merle. Soon he becomes aware that there’s more to the island than meets the eye and particularly its headman, Tor, but the more he drinks the strange tea given to him by the locals, the more he forgets his reason for coming ...
The events encountered by Eric Seven are part of a cycle started a thousand years earlier when a king and queen were cruelly ripped apart by the demands of their society. Eric and Merle are trapped in a pattern that will be repeated for eternity unless Eric and Merle can find a way of breaking it …
Marcus Sedgewick’s novel is an interesting experiment in cyclical story patterns and unusually for a children’s book, features more adult characters than child characters. I liked the way that the narrative traverses such a wide period of time and there is no faulting the scope of the storytelling here or Sedgewick’s inventiveness in using recurring motifs such as the strange tea that his characters drink, hares and of course the characters of Merle and Eric. I also liked the way in which Segewick incorporates real items, such as the Midwinterblood painting in the National Museum of Sweden.
The problem for me though is that this is a peculiarly slow story, made the more so because of the repetitiveness of certain elements. Ultimately I found it very difficult to feel close to either of the key characters enough to care about what happens to them and many of the stories have a bleak or sad ending, which ties in with the key themes of love and sacrifice but makes for a downbeat experience.
There are some good individual scenes – my favourites being the relationship between the painter and a young girl and the incorporation of a vampire storyline, which is really chilling. But the scene set in 2073 conversely didn’t feel ‘futuristic’ enough to convince.
If this book was by any writer other than Marcus Sedgewick I wouldn’t feel so disappointed by it but when judged in comparison to his other books, it’s an okay read rather than a great one.
The Verdict:
Marcus Sedgewick’s novel of sacrifice and loss is different to many other YA books out there in terms of its brave use of a cyclical storyline and the clever use of repeated motifs. However for me the overall effect doesn’t quite come off in that I never connected with the two main characters or their plight and the fact that there is repetition made the book feel rather slow to me. Compared with Marcus Sedgewick’s other books, I think it’s okay but not great.
MIDWINTERBLOOD was released in the UK on 6th October 2011. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
and I will look for you
and love you in each life.
Will you follow?”
In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain.
Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a King and his Queen were tragically torn apart. Their souls search to be reunited as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire, but only a bloody sacrifice will rekindle their true love.
It’s 2073 and Eric Seven is a journalist visiting the remote Swedish island of Blessed to investigate claims that no one there ages and the local population do not have children. Initially welcomed by the community, he strikes up a friendship with a young local woman called Merle. Soon he becomes aware that there’s more to the island than meets the eye and particularly its headman, Tor, but the more he drinks the strange tea given to him by the locals, the more he forgets his reason for coming ...
The events encountered by Eric Seven are part of a cycle started a thousand years earlier when a king and queen were cruelly ripped apart by the demands of their society. Eric and Merle are trapped in a pattern that will be repeated for eternity unless Eric and Merle can find a way of breaking it …
Marcus Sedgewick’s novel is an interesting experiment in cyclical story patterns and unusually for a children’s book, features more adult characters than child characters. I liked the way that the narrative traverses such a wide period of time and there is no faulting the scope of the storytelling here or Sedgewick’s inventiveness in using recurring motifs such as the strange tea that his characters drink, hares and of course the characters of Merle and Eric. I also liked the way in which Segewick incorporates real items, such as the Midwinterblood painting in the National Museum of Sweden.
The problem for me though is that this is a peculiarly slow story, made the more so because of the repetitiveness of certain elements. Ultimately I found it very difficult to feel close to either of the key characters enough to care about what happens to them and many of the stories have a bleak or sad ending, which ties in with the key themes of love and sacrifice but makes for a downbeat experience.
There are some good individual scenes – my favourites being the relationship between the painter and a young girl and the incorporation of a vampire storyline, which is really chilling. But the scene set in 2073 conversely didn’t feel ‘futuristic’ enough to convince.
If this book was by any writer other than Marcus Sedgewick I wouldn’t feel so disappointed by it but when judged in comparison to his other books, it’s an okay read rather than a great one.
The Verdict:
Marcus Sedgewick’s novel of sacrifice and loss is different to many other YA books out there in terms of its brave use of a cyclical storyline and the clever use of repeated motifs. However for me the overall effect doesn’t quite come off in that I never connected with the two main characters or their plight and the fact that there is repetition made the book feel rather slow to me. Compared with Marcus Sedgewick’s other books, I think it’s okay but not great.
MIDWINTERBLOOD was released in the UK on 6th October 2011. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
