A Winter's Promise: The Mirror Visitor Book 1 (The Mirror Visitor Quartet, 1)

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Note : This review will be divided into two parts : the first one in English et la deuxième en français. It reminded me a lot of The Selection, and The Red Queen series in certain ways, but I really disliked those series, I don't really like books that deal with competing for a man's love.

Christelle Dabos was born on the Côte d’Azur in 1980 and grew up in a home filled with classical music and historical games. The worlds are like nothing I’ve ever read before and I loved how Dabos interwove classic fantasy elements into a fresh story. Le style d'écriture est maladroit, alternant une syntaxe simple avec un vocabulaire parfois désuet, le tout extrêmement juvénile. Initially I did love that Ophelia is a main character who is soft spoken and there is a unique magic filled world, around a destroyed world, including traveling through mirrors.Ophelia's powers are much more interesting than they seem at first and I've really liked watching her romance with Thorn unfold. Criticism acknowledged, there is SO much that these books do well, so much that is so great about them. I come to appreciate Ophelia's godmother as much as she does, when she continually is outraged for her nieces sake! I could have done without her crazy interpretation of his actions, though, even if it made for a good laugh : this guy, who put her in harm way and did NOTHING to prevent her from being the naive and stupid girl she stays during the whole book, finally tells her that, I quote (well, I translate, lol), "he was starting to get used to her". And while there are many examples I could bring up to illustrate this claim, I'll spare an exhaustive list.

Branching and societal recognition between the different sense-gifts, the startling insight (and power) offered by heightened sense! There's still a lot I don't understand about the dimensions' relation, and how their relation works. She is send to a different part of the world where she will have to marry someone she doesn't want to.However, her simple life is soon upturned when she is told she HAS to marry a man from a far off, not-well-known land. I’d highly suggest the book to fans of The Chronicles of Narnia , Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, or those who like the misfortune in A Series of Unfortunate Events . Only an Everwitch who has control over all four seasons has any hope of making headway against the perils they face. But from that, essentially, narrative disarray emerges things I can really appreciate -- some purchase in the fictive chaos and clutter. She didn't get into it at all--but then she likes to pick her own books--but then I ended up reading not only the first book but all three books in the trilogy.

This story is full of political and court games, powers which belongs to specific families and people doing almost anything to cement their place in palace. Non ho capito perché, se ci troviamo in un futuro post-apocalittico, le persone pensano e si comportano come borghesi dell’Ottocento. Además es una lectura pausada, que se toma su tiempo para el desarrollo de su trama (que es un poco decimonónica en todo pero al estilo francés) y personajes. A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos was originally published in 2013 in French but was more recently (in October 2018) translated by Hidegarde Serle and published in English.

The biggest I problem I have of all the times that she does this has to do with her latter handling of important of characters from the first half of the series.

Mi è risultato impossibile posare il libro, soprattutto nell'ultima metà, mentre nella prima ho letto molto più a rilento.

The storyline itself isn't even interesting enough for me to continue with it and the main characters are EXTREMELY bland. The world building in this book is delightful but there isn't enough action and it drags a little then ends just when things are starting to move. Registered office address: Unit 34 Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EF. Even the objects are familiar, since all Ophelia has to do is touch them to know everywhere they’ve been and with who. A couple of times I actually went back and re-read the previous page to try to understand where she was coming from !