Midwinterblood

Yes, your prize-whore was tripping all over herself to get down to the library the very day the 2014 Printz Award winner was announced and thank goodness I'm fast because Midwinterblood was still buried there on the YA shelves, safe and sound and just waiting for me to snatch it up.

Marcus Sedgwick's fantasy novel is comprised of seven interlocking stories each set in a different time with different characters, each the reincarnation of the same two souls seeking to reunite with each other over the course of ten centuries. From an ancient pagan King and Queen to a mother and son to an artist and a child, each reincarnation leads you in a giant circle back to it's creepy beginning, set in the year 2073 where a journalist arrives on a remote island where inhabitants are rumored to live forever.

The premise is engaging. The execution is mediocre. The first problem I ran into was Sedgwick's tendency to try so hard to create mysteriously creepy that he ended up creating a lot of what the hell instead. There became so many unanswered loose ends that mysterious turned into annoying. 

My second problem was that the overarching love story - the souls that were struggling over ten centuries to be reunited - never really rang true. None of the stories were long enough to develop that kind of deep, believable love. Not the kind of love that repeatedly calls for suicide pacts. It simply didn't ring true for me.

Which leads me to my final problem with the novel. I'm unsure of who categorized this book as Young Adult. I didn't read anything in this novel to indicate that it necessarily belonged on the Young Adult shelves versus the Adult fiction. I'm still scratching my head over this.

I didn't think this a bad novel by any means. In fact, I still love the premise. I simply think it could have been better written. Fleshing out the stories to make motivations believable and tying up all the loose ends for the readers would have made this mediocre novel - for me - an absolutely fantastic novel.

It's a good thing I'm not handing out Printz Awards, isn't it?

February Wrap Up

With only 28 days in February, I feel a bit cheated. And admittedly, I sacrificed quite a bit of reading time this month as I worked on some technological trickery behind the scenes around this joint. Some of the books I read were 2013 releases. The Returned was Jason Mott's debut novel last year and was picked up by A&E as a television series to be called "The Resurrected," although I've heard that the series deviates greatly from the plot of the novel. Which might be a good thing since I wasn't all that thrilled with the novel, which revolves around the long-dead suddenly just reappearing. No, not in zombie form. Just reappearing. As in, Hello, I'm back. It's a great premise - and one that has already been used successfully with a French television series - but Mott really went nowhere with it. It just stalled out. While I was pleased that he didn't go with the zombie thing, he didn't go anywhere and the whole thing just flopped for me. Skip it and watch A&E's version - maybe that will be better.

Speaking of last year's books, I finally got around to reading JoJo Moyes' hit book, Me Before You. And if you keep up with my reading adventures on Facebook (and you really should because that's where all the good book talk happens) then you watched me go through a whole box of Kleenex. Which, as I mentioned at the time, was completely out of character for me since I never even batted an eye at last year's other famous tear-jerker, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, a book I found highly contrived. But Moyes? I started crying around page 210 and never stopped. I felt utterly ridiculous and yet loved every minute of it. I have a library hold on every book on her backlist now. And if any literary snobs out there care to make a smart ass comment about that, I'll smack you with a copy of a Franzen book.

Okay, moving right along. Did you see Annihilation up there? Did you? Oh dear gawd. Okay, if you haven't heard of this one yet, let me fill you in. It was just released this month, the first book in the really hyped Southern Reach Trilogy. Here's the blurb:

 As I read the book (and I flew through it in two days) I felt like I didn't understand three quarters of what was going on. But I couldn't stop reading. It wasn't until I was nearly done that it occurred to me how much it reminded me of the television show LOST. Not in plot, mind you, but trying to piece together clues. I loved it, even if I didn't understand all of it. The best part? This trilogy is on the FAST-TRACK for publication. The second installment will be out in May and the final book of the trilogy will hit bookstores in September. Now that is how you publish a trilogy. Boom.

The Detainee is a debut novel of speculative fiction (dytopia) by Peter Liney due out later in March. I've got a review that will fill you in on all the details but this was really unique dystopia in that it offered some hope at the end of the story and you don't often see that. I loved it.

Speaking of a good new trilogy, author Sara Green is about to have a hit on her hands with Half Bad. But you'll have to wait for the full review on that one....I actually enjoyed it enough to write a review on that one. So that's saying something right there.

You'll also be seeing a full review of Matt Haig's The Humans, a book both funny and philosophical. It's a 2013 release, but it's up for an Edgar Award this year so as we get closer to the May 1 awards ceremony I will be featuring a review of each book nominated for Best Novel. Another full review coming this week is recent 2014 Printz Award Winner, Midwinterblood, a novel that I thought was an interesting choice for this prestigious award. Hmmmmm.

And the final novel for February is the classic Jack London book Call of the Wild, which my eight year old son has been begging me to read to him for the past six months or so. We took advantage of a break between Percy Jackson books and sneaked this one in. It had been literally decades since I last read it. I specifically remember this novel having a direct influence on me as a child, especially on my development of empathy towards animals. London's story of the Alaska gold-rush from a dog's perspective is heart-breaking and hopeful in turn as Buck the German Shepherd-turned sled dog experiences a series of owners, some incompetent and cruel, others kind and able. While I think my son is still a bit young to understand the more subtle themes of the novel, I'm hoping he will be like me and return to the book again and again throughout my teen years.

Well that's February for you. What was your best read of February? Feel free to leave comments here or over on my Facebook page if that's easier for you (I know it is for me!). Stay tuned on that front, by the way. I've got some small changes in that arena coming later in March that I'm hoping will make book discussions a lot easier for all of us. Yay.