Winter Rose

I so thought I would like this. I normally like fantasy and I've heard some really good things about Patricia McKillip. Alright, I heard those things about Solstice Wood, but I saw Winter Rose in a used bookstore and took a chance.

I liked how the author's use of language created this magical world. It actually felt magical. The main character of Rois fit in there perfectly - she didn't care much about the everyday and longed to spend her time outdoors, in the forest. She also saw what others couldn't - such as figures in the wind and in the water.

I also liked how the imagery of winter was used and juxtaposed with the actual winter, hard for a rural and isolated community.

But I guess I just couldn't get into the story. I found myself looking forward to finishing and not really caring about what happened to Rois or her sister.

Have you read this or anything else by this author? What did you think? Maybe I just didn't get it?

Challenges: Mythopoeic Challenge, Genre Challenge

A Concise Chinese- English Dictionary for Lovers

I bought Xiaolou Guo's book at the beginning of the year to have an X author for the A-Z challenge. It sounded really good - unique story from a Chinese perspective. I wanted to like it so much I saved it and saved it to make the anticipation last longer. But I just didn't like it, no matter how hard I tried.

I really didn't like the main character. She annoyed me. Really annoyed me. I thought she was whiny and I can't really stand whiny. As the story progressed she got less whiny and more wise, but I just didn't believe that it was happening that way. Her character developed in ways that didn't make sense to me.

Plus I thought that a lot of the jokes were forced. I felt that the author was actually trying to insert a certain number of national identity related jokes at certain intervals. Some of the were amusing, yes, but they still seemed to belong to a different story.

Because I didn't find the characters or their actions believable, I didn't really care about them. That's never good.

It's such a shame, because I think that the author's idea was fantastic. I just think that the development of the idea could have been a lot stronger.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Orbis Terrarum Challenge