I’ve become a big fan of Marcus Sedgwick and his creative young adult novels. Midwinterblood is the second one of his books I’ve read, and it was just as good as the first one (The Ghosts of Heaven).
What I love about Sedgwick is that he’s very experimental with his narrative. This one was incredibly creative and beautifully written—tragic and yet hope-filled. I don’t even know how to categorize it: a young adult sci-fi paranormal about the enduring nature of love. It had all those elements.
Here are 3 things I enjoyed most about it:
- The seven stories. They were all tied together by characters with the same or similar names, and this drove the narrative—a mystery that needed solving. Where will we see them next? How will they know about each other?
- The artistic catchphrases. These weren’t cliche catchphrases; they were specific to the characters. One particular character used vocal tags like “well” and “So it is,” so even though the characters had different names in the different narratives, this helped readers identity who was who. It was a great technique for threading the stories together. There were also narrative elements like the dragon flower and hares, which connected the different stories to each other.
- The mystery and surprise. It was basically the same two characters living seven different lives, and part of the pleasure of reading this book was trying to predict whether or not they would find one another again.
Probably the best part of the book were the first lines:
“The sun does not go down.
This is the first thing that Eric Seven notices about Blessed Island. There will be many other strange things that he will notice, before the forgetting takes hold of him, but that will come later.”
Midwinterblood is a fantastic novel full of intrigue, mystery, and philosophical wonderings.
The above is an affiliate link. I only recommend books that I personally enjoy. I actually don’t even talk about the books I don’t enjoy, because I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. But if you’re ever curious whether I’ve read a book and whether I liked or disliked it, don’t hesitate to ask.
