Wintersong
Wintersong
Author: S. Jae-Jones
Published by: Thomas Dunne Books February 7th, 2017
Genre: Fantasy fiction, Adventure fiction
Liesl grows up in a provincial town enraptured by the tales of the Goblin King. These tales are of no concern to her, seeing as she is but a plain maiden, living in the shadow of her sister’s beauty and brother’s extraordinary talent for music. With her own passion for music, Liesl composes in secret, collecting her precious music in a small lock box. What she doesn’t know, is the Goblin King has been watching her; listening to her every composition. He soon presents her a choice, one trapping her in the Underground as his wife. It doesn’t take long for Liesl to comprehend her love for the Goblin King. But being trapped in the Underground takes a dire toll on her body and she must face the decision of leaving the man she loves in order to gain her freedom once more.
Wintersong cultivated mixed feelings within me. It is not the type of book I—personally—could obsess over. Be that because of my lack of interest in the ‘Underground’ (which basically tells you what it is in its name), or because I kept envisioning this in Anime, I’m not for certain.
Allow me to elaborate.
In order for me to get ‘obsessive’ over a story, I need the author to tell me about beautiful landscapes, gray or blue skies, lakes, mountains, snow or deliciously green grass. These are places I long to be—places inspiring inspiration, itself!
Jae-Jones began in such a way with the Goblin Grove and the market and so forth. These places she wrote of hooked me like a starry-eyed fish. But the second half of the book took place in the Underground: dark with packed dirt and no windows (unless you counted the enchanted mirror). It felt so dark, damp and lonely. And that’s roughly two hundred pages of it!
As for the Anime reference, it all has to do with the Goblin King’s description. He is tall, slender, white/gold hair, features almost feminine, yet masculine.
Am I the only one picturing this man as an Anime character?
I may not know my Anime, but I do have one or two of them I really enjoyed watching—though it is still not something I would sit down to watch on my own.
This said, with the air of air of Anime in the story (whether it was truly there or not), I could not envision authentic people in my mind’s eye while reading. I constantly saw everything in Technicolor. If you are into that kind of thing, however, I guarantee you will absolutely love the story.
All in all, I somewhat enjoyed the bitter-sweet/romantic novel. The writing was good, although I am not one to understand the technicalities of music. There were plenty of moments were the story grew sluggish, due to unfamiliar, musical vocabulary.
In some scenes, I felt the writing was overkill. I understand Jae-Jones wanted us to grasp the full emotion of the situation, but it would’ve been fine to cut the paragraph’s word count in half; rephrase.
S. Jae-Jones’ second part of this is novel called Shadowsong. Date of publishing: February 6th, 2018.
Will I read it?
I will certainly add it to my TBR list – and we all know how long those can be. But I haven’t given up on it. That’s a good thing, mind you, because I am picky about what I will spend my time reading.
