Midwinter (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Not content with writing some of the best comic books on the shelves, Matthew Sturges has turned his amazing talents to prose fiction and the results are masterful. His prose work reminds me of Guy Gavriel Kay crossed with the audacity of Zelazny at his best." --Bill Willingham, Eisner award-winning author of Fables

"With the publication of Midwinter, readers are about to discover what comic fans have learned over the past few years, and what I've known longer than any of you--namely, that Matt Sturges is one of the most talented writers working today." --Chris Roberson, award-winning author of Three Unbroken and End of the Century

Product Description

Winter only comes to the land once in a hundred years. But the snow covers ancient secrets: secrets that could topple a kingdom.

Mauritaine was a war hero, a Captain in the Seelie Army. Then he was accused of treason and sentenced to life without parole at Crere Sulace, a dark and ancient prison in the mountains, far from the City Emerald. But now the Seelie Queen--Regina Titania herself--has offered him one last chance to redeem himself, an opportunity to regain his freedom and his honor.

Unfortunately, it s a suicide mission, which is why only Mauritaine and the few prisoners he trusts enough to accompany him, would even dare attempt it. Raieve, beautiful and harsh, an emissary from a foreign land caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, a nobleman imprisoned as a result of political intrigues so Byzantine that not even he understands them. Brian Satterly, a human physicist, apprehended searching for the human victims of the faery changeling trade.

Meanwhile, dark forces are at work at home and abroad. In the Seelie kingdom, the reluctant soldier Purane-Es burns with hatred for Mauritaine, and plots to steal from him the one thing that remains to him: his wife. Across the border, the black artist Hy Pezho courts the whim of Mab, offering a deadly weapon that could allow the Unseelie in their flying cities to crush Titania and her army once and for all.

With time running out, Mauritaine and his companions must cross the deadly Contested Lands filled with dire magical fallout from wars past. They will confront mounted patrols, brigands, and a traitor in their midst. And before they reach their destination, as the Unseelie Armies led by Queen Mab approach the border, Mauritaine must decide between his own freedom and the fate of the very land that has forsaken him.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 345 pages
• Publisher: Pyr (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591027349
• ISBN-13: 978-1591027348
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #51,509 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous cover art, March 10, 2009

By	Kat @ FantasyLiterature.com - See all my reviews

I was attracted to Midwinter because of the beautiful cover art (by Chris McGrath) and the publisher's blurb. This sounds like my kind of story. Unfortunately, this novel didn't deliver what I was looking for, but it had so much potential that I hold out hope for future efforts from Matthew Sturges.

Midwinter starts out well. The prose is pleasant -- perfectly readable and without any pretensions. Usually this is the first place an author will lose me, but Mr Sturges didn't.

The main characters, especially Mauritane, Silverdun, Satterly, and Raieve, are intriguing and I was fully expecting to be drawn into their lives. However, I never was. Part of the problem was the third-person point of view that shifted unexpectedly. It never settled down long enough to examine the hearts of the key players. Some of the secondary characters such as Lady Anne, Queen Mab, Hy Pezho, and Purane-Es were given excellent characterization, so I know that Mr Sturges is capable. But, the main characters never opened up for me, so I felt like an outsider during their quest.

I also never quite felt the setting. It's midwinter and our heroes are traveling, eating, sleeping, and fighting outdoors in the snow, but I never felt cold. Most of the characters are fae and we are several times told how different they are from humans, but we are never shown how they are different (except that toward the end of the book we're told that they are drained by cold iron, and they have funny ears).

There are some flashes of imaginative brilliance (I loved the shifting areas in the Contested Lands, and the messages sprites were hilarious), but there are also a lot of elements that just seem weirdly cobbled together (e.g., the philosophy discussions, the humans stuck in faery, the changeling trade, Avalon, Sylvan, the Arcadian religion, the Thule Man, cars and rebar, Mab's flying city, the prophecy). I may be completely wrong about this, but I have noticed in other new novelists a tendency to throw in a bunch of disparate ideas -- as if the author had been collecting these fancies for years and then assembled them all in their first novel. Or, sometimes perhaps they do this because these elements came up during their research and they feel the need to include them. I am not accusing Mr Sturges of either of these motivations, but that's just what it feels like. I found myself often saying "huh? Where did that come from? ... Where's the kitchen sink?" I am certainly not asking for my fantasy to be straight-up medieval-style epic, but this was just confusing.

So, basically it was the lack of characterization of the heroes and the strange hodgepodge that kept me from enjoying Midwinter as much as I thought I would. I do, however, have high hopes for Matthew Sturges and I would not refuse to read a different story in another setting.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It just wasn't fleshed-out enough., March 2, 2009

By	GSH_67 "www.fantasyliterature.com" (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews

In Matthew Sturges's own words, Midwinter is "The Dirty Dozen with elves." While that theme is well used across genres, it's one of my favorites because when it's done right it makes for great story-telling. So, I really expected to like this novel.

Midwinter started out strong. Immediately following the prolog, there's an awesome prison fight. But from that point on, the rest of the story was like being in a thick fog. Details are vague. There's nothing that seems particularly elfish about the elves. Winter is supposed to play such a big part, but I kept forgetting it was even cold. The pace alternates between moving too fast and getting side-tracked down boring and ill-fitting tangents.

Magic is so infused into this world that it warps natural order and has become part of almost all of the denizens. It's there when you need a light, when you want to give your horse the ability to talk, or when ya just want to make yourself look more fashionable, but for reasons never really explained, it may or may not be usable in a tight spot.

One of the important elements of Midwinter is a relationship between our real world and this land of the Fae. I tend to like having a link to our Earth in a fantasy story, but I found the introduction of our modern technology into this setting to be jarring -- almost laughable. Hey, I think a `71 Pontiac Lemans is one of the coolest cars of all time too, but that doesn't mean I want to find one in this sort of fantasy novel.

I'll readily admit that maybe I just didn't "get-it." If that's the case, it's because by the time I got to the last third of the book, I was too bored to even care anymore. For the Dirty Dozen theme to work, you have to make the reader care about the characters. There are some truly interesting characters in Midwinter, they just needed more development. Mr. Sturges is a talented author and has a successful career writing comics. But Midwinter needed to be fleshed out more in order to compensate for not having any illustrations.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promising Traditional Fantasy Meets the Modern World, April 18, 2009

By	Sacramento Book Review "SacramentoBookReview.com" (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

Once a war hero, Mauritaine is now a prisoner in Crere Sulace prison serving a life term for treason. But the Queen of the Seelie Fae, Regina Titiana, has offered Mauritaine a second chance at freedom if he will undertake a mysterious and deadly mission. Facing limited options, Mauritaine must choose the companions for his quest from a group of prisoners, one of whom might be a spy for Mab, the Unseelie Queen.

//Midwinter// is set in a land that brushes up against other dimensions, including the modern human world, pulling fae and humans alike into its mysterious path. Mauritaine and his band follow a convoluted route through the story as they encounter refugees from the human world and those who would thwart their mission. This is a debut novel by comic book writer Matthew Sturges, and it shows promise by blending aspects of traditional and urban fantasy. The novel has a great beginning, but lacks direction due to too many storylines that need fuller development and clarity. Despite an uneven debut, Sturges shows real talent - //Midwinter// has the potential to be the start of a very good series.

Reviewed by Theresa Lucas