Midwinterblood

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Eric cared far more about his painting/art than Merle and Merle cared more about the apples she found. Across the different tales, the two souls appear as lovers, mother and son, brother and sister, and artist and child as they come close to finding each other before facing the ultimate sacrifice . Poe's story, as well as his own fascination with technique, provided that final piece of the puzzle.

In seven stories that take place on the strange island of Blessed, two souls seek each other over a period of a thousand years. Midwinterblood reminds me of Cloud Atlas (in terms of the connecting stories), When the Sea is Rising Red and The Brides of Rollrock Island (because of the richness in tales of love lost, found, and lost again). Pretpostavljam da je namenjena svima pa ko prepozna nešto svoje u njoj- prepozna, ostali neće biti nešto preterano oduševljeni. Finally, I should mention how perfectly eerie and fitting the setting of Blessed Island is, with its hidden population, its mysterious hidden side, and its dragon-like flower that holds the secret to youth and life.It's structure of several linked but distinct short stories spanning centuries, and it's clear but never really explicitly stated reincarnation angle broadly reminded me of Cloud Atlas, one of my favourite books of all time, but it's a fairly superficial similarity and it probably isn't fair to either book to directly compare them. Here's some subjectivity for you (if you think everything until this point was subjective, too, I completely agree with you; I think responses to books are all subjective): I liked the explanation of the name Blessed Island.

In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a ritual sacrifice takes place. I did at times wonder if Sedgwick was playing too much to his core audience of long-fingered, spindly-legged goths and self-harming emos, for whom love is always eternal and doomed.

The story is complex, revolving around characters known mostly through the years as Eric and Merle – a changing cast of ages, times, and once gender (sort of) that all comes back to the fact that Erik and Merle are the spirits of two people wrapped in an ancient love, tied to Blessed Island. I think that the entire story could have been so much richer and more vivid with more description and emotion. Although the setting – a small, mysterious island – is the same throughout and so are the set of the protagonists (well, sort of), each story reads different from one another – they could be entirely independent had it not been for the ever-present feeling that they are not. Needless to say the story itself twists in turns in way I never saw coming and the storyline is so interesting that it kept me reading page after page.

I will say that this has made my mind up about needing to read the author's other books, I already have Revolver sitting on my shelf and I plan on getting to it as soon as possible. The whole centuries long 'love' story of Eric/Merle started because the first Eric from back in the day was a king who willingly sacrificed himself to the gods so his island/people would be fertile. I was more interested in the mysteries of the island and its secretive inhabitants than the love story between the two MC's.The one interesting thing is the way Eric and Merle's relationship changes in each generation, but this is something that weakens the book, too. After Laura finishes telling the story, the children discover her true identity—she is the ghost of Erik (actually Erika) and the story was about the forbidden relationship between her and her lover, Merle. We are sometimes several pages into the story before we realise who Eric and Merle are in each incarnation, but continuity is guaranteed not only because the main protagonists keep similar names, but also because of the use of recurring symbols such as the hare. We follow a set of people throughout a few thousand years of time, not keeping one single gender the whole way through, and their interactions do change from lifetime to lifetime. Although Sedgwick, a master of chiaroscuro effects, never fails to deliver up an atmosphere of veiled dread, some of the sections work better than others.

In the subsequent sections, each one dragging us further back in time, the characters of Eric, Merle and the priest recombine in various ways, playing out a story of Nietzschean eternal recurrence centred on the island. In fact, the seven stories inside its pages revolve around death and include monsters, myths, witches, ghosts, and bombs.

I'm not sure that everyone will enjoy this, as theme, plot and structure are all so strange, but it's a short and compelling read, so I'd definitely recommend that you take a look. If a life can be ruined in a single moment, a moment of betrayal, or violence, or ill luck, then why can a life not also be saved, be worth living, be made, by just a few pure moments of perfection?