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

Product Information

As ecstatic as I was to finally read a Fantasy YA novel written in French, and despite the NUMEROUS praises it got in France (I mean, it's published by GALLIMARD! Ophelia is an Anima with the specific gift of being able to read the emotions, thoughts, and scenes of objects belonging to past owners.

I am not kidding, every single time Ophélie looked at him, she HAD to say something about how much of a giant he is, how tall his legs are, how gigantic he is, how small she is compared to how tall he is, because he is a giant, and when she borrows his coat it's so huge because he's so tall and she's so small, and how she gets dizzy just looking at him because she’s so short and he’s so freakishly tall, because, you know, he’s a giant and he’s skinny but did you know that he is also very tall? It's the perfect company to curl up to at the end of a long day and curse me I'm a softie and the ya romance just does me in. As declining the marriage would mean banishment and family shame, Ophelia has to leave behind her family and much loved museum to the cold ark known as the Pole and follow her fiancee to the Citaceleste, the Capital.Even before she reached her zenith in power, agency, and authority, she was just always, always brave. No matter what Ophelia encountered as her storyline wove and ebbed, that consistent from the start was her unwavering aptitude for confrontation.

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. A Winter’s Promise is a beautifully structured system of mirrors, reflecting in its glittering facets many other books. The first chapters were very good (probably because they were carefully edited and polished) but that’s about it.The world building was interesting and so was the magic system but I had lots of issues with the book. I was a bit hesitant to get this books at first as it is a translated piece which has been translated from french int English. To address the quartet's major faults as a whole: it mishandles the way it crafts reader's expectations. scialba e insignificante, non si prende cura di se stessa (si veste male, non si pettina, ad un certo punto dice di non lavarsi da una settimana e la cosa non pare crearle disagio), è incapace di instaurare rapporti interpersonali (è cronicamente timida, non sa articolare le parole, nessuno la capisce perché mugugna mentre parla), non riesce a portare a termine nemmeno le attività più semplici perché inciampa quando cammina, rompe qualunque cosa tocchi, si strozza mentre mangia e cade tentando di sedersi.

But from that, essentially, narrative disarray emerges things I can really appreciate -- some purchase in the fictive chaos and clutter. The series isn’t perfect and if you want something to read that’s simple I wouldn’t recommend these books.A debut novel by a French author, A Winter's Promise begins a four-book fantasy series that vibrates with the wonder of Harry Potter's magical world and has all the dark, opaque shadows of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. Beneath her worn scarf and thick glasses, the young girl hides the ability to read and communicate with the souls of objects, and the power to travel through mirrors. Also there are a lot of coincidences, especially in meeting someone in a private party, that made me less invested in the story. Christelle Dabos was born on the Côte d'Azur in 1980 and grew up in a home filled with classical music and historical games. Ho apprezzato particolarmente le capacità descrittive dell’autrice, che rendono gli ambienti del romanzo molto vividi e colorati.