Matthew Sturges: Midwinter

Normally, POV is one of my pet peeves and yet I tagged along, as Midwinter slips and slides from omniscient to singular from one head to another, without going apeshit. Not every slip 'n slide went without a bump; I vaguely remember being confused and somewhat irked when one POV-switch took place at the turn of a page. But that's letter-setting work, and not author skill.

Then, to finish reading, surely the story had to be immensely gripping!

Well, not half as most of the others books I've lately read. The pace was not slow, maybe a bit meandering, but certainly no action-packed story either, not like the blurb seems to promise anyway, but then, whoever reads blurbs, ey? I put it down and picked it up again, at my leisure. No nail biting, no finding myself up in bed trying to read with my eyelids closed, no putting off chores till tomorrow to see what happens next.

There's some rich and less rich language, all in the right places. The characters a bit stereotypical, perhaps, in the sense that you know the heroes, the roles they're supposed to play in the story. But  somehow Mauritane became sort of my leader too. I wanted to see where he ended up. I wanted to stick with him.

Something about the voice, the atmosphere called up of the rich history of faerie lore, especially the tie with the land, like real stories about real faeries should be. I liked this faerie world that had evolved parallel with the human world, that it wasn't something that lived in a bubble.

The novel feels somewhat lean, in more than one sense. But somehow losing all the usual fat means that while I wasn't wowed during the reading, I was wooed after: sometimes during the day I still wonder about Mauritane, about Silverdun, about the queens. I think about reading it yet again, now certainly since The Office of Shadow sits sleeping in my to read pile. And in comparison many books I've lately read, that's quite an accomplishment.