Customer Reviews

Winterking

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I think the other review here is unfair. Another thing that is unfair is that this book has only two reviews. In 1986 it was a runner-up for the World Fantasy Award; Hazel garnered accolades from many fantasy greats including Robin McKinley, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Peter S. Beagle, Patricia McKillip, John Clute (the list could go on at least a few more names) before apparently falling off the face of the planet; being swallowed up by the void of obscurity; unjustly forgotten in this reviewer's confident opinion. What happened?

I don't know. "Winterking" is a brilliant novel, a very opaque one it is true, but well worth reading. It continues the story of "Undersea", following the dogboy Wyck--now no longer such, but a mysterious figure that has lived through countless ages in a world hauntingly like ours but vastly different. This story begins in an alternate world, in New England, part of an America where the Revolution never took place; a world in which Wyck, now Wykeham, must fight a final battle with Duinn the god of death. There space and time play tricks, and crows talk, and houses hold the souls of suicides, and men and women suffer, though in that respect at least it is not so different from ours.

This book is almost overwhelmingly sad in parts. The relationships between characters are very nuanced; in this respect "Winterking" does tend to segue into the style of Hazel's later (and last?) book, "The Wealdwife's Tale." The view of sexual relationships is almost unremittingly bleak with a break at the end of the novel, a kind of catharsis--the kind that struggles to gasp out in "The Wealdwife's Tale" but just doesn't in that one. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't read these things: and I wonder if it is an attractive vision to be putting forward when I want to get somebody to read them. I also wonder if maybe it's just an impression I got from the time I was reading the book, and not something that would hold true for all.

The writing style is competent and in parts brilliant. There is a lucid poetry in the best parts that paints pictures in your head as you read. It's not all frippery and pointlessness inserted at the expense of real atmosphere, it is very powerful and well-done.

The cover of my edition, indeed of all the Bantam Spectra versions of this trilogy, is quite fitting. My advice to these publishers is to reissue these books. But another part of me is quite perverse and wants them to remain obscure for a while longer, so I can enjoy my delicious enlightenment alone. The "Finnbranch" trilogy is a treat, a fantasy series for people with brains and good taste. They will find there audience someday without my help I think.

Im sorry but if you were expecting a thrilling conclusion to Yearwood and Undersea, Winterking is not it. Basically, Hazel abandons the celtic/fantastic genre for some modern story about some people in a house arguing about an inheritance. If there is subtle meaning to it, I didnt get it. Its almost like comparing Queen of the Damned to Interview with a Vampire and the Vampire Lestat (although this is much much worse -- not even related). Anyway, I could not even bring myself to go beyond page 10. Truly sad since I thought Yearwood was great and Undersea decent.