McKillip, Patricia A. - Winter Rose

[oyceter]

I read this before, freshman year of college, and I am rather bemused by how little of it I remember. I also remember reading through it and being mostly confused about what was happening through a vast majority of it, and most likely missing the major climactic moments.

That said, I've never been that much of a Patricia McKillip fan because I've always felt I could never quite submerge myself in her books.

I don't know what's changed in the past four years (or even recently, because I had the same feeling about The Cygnet and the Firebird), but I loved this book. Fell in complete and total love with the language, with Rois' blackbird hair and wood eyes, with a world in which water is a doorway, wild horses ride in the wind, light can reveal or conceal, and roses can bloom and catch fire in the middle of the deepest winter.

For some reason, the narrative voice (Rois') reminded me a great deal of Beauty's in McKinley's Beauty, and Laurel reminded me a bit of both Hope and Grace. I get the same feeling from both books, of a pleasant countryside where people live and work and the strange events that take place just out of reach of that place. Of course, Winter Rose's is much more threatening and otherworldly.

Now starting the Riddle-Master trilogy, which I could never get into in high school. It's very strange, as though suddenly the McKillip translation switch in my head has suddenly turned on. I wonder if a reread of Cygnet and Firebird will have the same effect.

Comments

[tenebraeli.livejournal.com]

I liked Winter Rose, but my fav McKillip book has always been The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. That's one that I can haul out and re-read any number of times and still find layers in it.

[oyceter]

Oo, I read that... last year? I may need to pick it up again though.