It’s a love story, baby just say yes

This week, I’ve read the brand-spanking-new 2014 Prinz award winning novel Midwinterblood, written by Marcus Sedgwick. I see why it won: definite depth and crazy twists.  But I’m not 100% sure why the judges thought this book would appeal to the majority of teen readers – to me, this was definitely geared more toward an adult mind (or at least, a very mature adolescent).  In her review, Megan from a blog called Book Brats seems to agree with me: even the majority of the protagonists in each part of the novel are adults.  It forces some distance between the young adults the novel is supposedly geared toward and the actual happenings of the novel itself.

The novel examines the relationship between love and sacrifice, and (as tumblr user paperbackd so accurately put) it’s a love story, but it’s not a romance.  Midwinterblood centers on two characters, Eric and Merle, who appear throughout time, always sharing a loving relationship, be it actually a romance, a sibling-ship, or a mother/son relationship, but the initial love is always there.  Their story seems to work back in time, showing the future lives they share and traveling backwards to reveal the original Eirikr and Melle, who agreed to always find each other.  Melle’s agreement to this cyclical living of lives comes at the very end of the book, and it reinforces the theme of sacrificing for those you love, which popular blog Ex Libris also agrees with.  While this book seems to be targeted for a younger demographic, I’m not sure if the themes of love and sacrifice don’t necessarily hit home for younger readers.  Sure, they get that Katniss sacrifices herself to save her sister Prim during the Reaping in The Hunger Games, and they get that Tris sacrifices herself for what is right in Allegiant, but Midwinterblood is home to an extremely intense kind of sacrifice – one that adolescents may have a hard time relating to (in my opinion, I feel as though a parent would be able to understand all of the sacrifices examined in this novel). In an interview with Marcus Sedgwick, he says that he writes what he writes, and it’s up to the publishing company to decide to whom his stories are pushed.  Adolescents may enjoy the book, but it might take them until they are a bit older to fully appreciate it.

Upon reading another interview with the author, it dawned on me that this book is meant to be thought of in the horror genre. That’s something I could probably get on board with – there is a lot of blood in this book. A LOT. In fact, the painting referenced in the book (and that the book is based upon) is called Midvinterblot, painted by Carl Larsson, which translates to Midwinter Sacrifice (specifically a blood sacrifice), as Sedgwick explains in a guest article.  After reading the book and finding out the painting in it does exist in real life, I couldn’t look it up fast enough.  It is much different than I had pictured in my head while reading, but it definitely encapsulates the overall feeling of the book – always on the brink of something but never quite getting there (Sedgwick puts this in a great way in another guest post on a blog, and he really tells a great version of his own themes in writing the book.).  In keeping with the horror genre, I can remember some very creepy moments that lend their hands to the importance of the novel – there are so many recurring symbols and motifs!  Every time one popped up in a new part, I was always flipping back to when I saw it before, trying to decipher its meaning.  Also, there is a ghost.  And a vampire.  What could get more creepy than that?  Ultimately, blogger Alexa pinned down almost exactly what I had been thinking the entire time reading the book: there is something in the way that Sedgwick has written this story that is just, well, creepy.  It’s clever, it’s shocking at parts, and there is something about reincarnation that just equally freaks me out in practice as it does amaze me in theory.

All in all, I really, truly enjoyed Midwinterblood! I couldn’t put it down! Now, I’m not sure if I couldn’t put it down because, a) It was amazing, b) I was really enjoying it, or c) I had no idea what was going on and I just needed to find out.  I’m going to go with d) all of the above!