Midwinter Blood

by Marcus Sedgwick

[inlibrisveritas]

When MacMillian Kids offered to give out ARCs to bloggers for Midwinterblood I quickly jumped at the chance. The blurb made it sound so different and I was more than a little curious as to why so many different characters were connected. I literally started reading this the moment I had it out of the package it came it, and I was not disappointed in it.

Midwinterblood is written in a sort of story-teller narration and at first I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get used to it but I came to love the uniqueness of it. I found the story to be fluid and rich in lore, and it even had a dash mystery to it. The plot is seperated into seven stories that are all connected by the Island of Blessed and by the love of Eric and Merle, but don’t let that fool you into this these stories are ‘normal’. Each story progresses farther back into time, each revealing a little more to the whole story and each showing you a different side of love that is possible between two people. The main players, Eric and Merle, show up in some form in each story though they are not always quite the same and so their story becomes complex and their has a depth that truly transcends time and obstacles. While it does have a bit of a warming effect on your heart it’s also heartbreaking, and despite the shortness of each story I really wanted things to really work out for Eric and Merle no matter what form their love survived in.

Another fantastic element is the mystery I mentioned earlier, as you move backwards in time you notice things that were mentioned before start reoccurring in the past as well. Each story reveals something else about what’s truly happening with Eric and Merle, and then you get the last fantastic piece of the puzzle with the seventh story that ties it all into one. It even goes back to the first story and ties it up nicely, but it definitely left me hungry for more. There are no loose ends left to dangle and everything is explained as much as it can be. I zipped through this one rather quickly and read most of it in one day, and I can certainly see this as a book I would love to re-read in the future.