Miss Shayne is back with a savage book review! And stay tuned this week for some special programming on the blog.
Reading the synopsis for this book, I wasn't sure I would
like Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones. It sounded like a meager fairy tale.
Since the cover was beautiful and plastered with appraisals that made reading
it seem worthwhile, I decided to take a gamble. Never let me into a casino,
folks, because I will never hit the jackpot.
Wintersong tells
the story of Liesl, who grew up playing her violin for the Goblin King in the
Goblin Grove, a clearing in the woods by her house where the Goblin King was
able to cross into the world above the ground. In addition to playing her
violin, Liesl would play games and make careless gambles, not understanding the
gravity of what she was promising the Goblin King. Now that she is grown, the
Goblin King expects her to fulfill all that she had promised as a child.
Because years have passed, Liesl has forgotten the Goblin
King. She is now the least noticeable child of the town innkeepers. With a
beautiful younger sister and a musically gifted younger brother, Liesl is often
overlooked, yet she continues to put everyone else first. Liesl's younger
sister gets abducted one evening, and it is up to Liesl to travel into the
Underground to save her. Liesl also has to sacrifice her musical compositions
to the Goblin King, live with him, and become his wife. She initially thinks
she is doing this to keep her sister from suffering this fate, but she
eventually discovers that she is also keeping the world above ground from
entering into a goblin-infested winter.
While living in the Underground with the Goblin King, Liesl
is gifted everything she needs to compose music. She sees herself as a
composer, so she is grateful, but she has the composer's equivalent of writer's
block. She needs inspiration to finish the composition that she started on her
wedding night, but the inspiration has not come. She has something to prove to
herself, but she gets frustrated and starts to wonder if she will ever be able
to finish what could be her greatest work.
I'll get into my beef with this book in a second, but I
would first like to explain how beautifully written the beginning of this book
is. The first two pages captured my attention and promised not to let me down.
They set up an innocent beginning to an ominous and romantic ending. The word
choice was elegant and not too detailed. This didn't last long. Further into
this endeavor of a book, the language started to sound pretentious. All the
beautiful new words I got to look up and consider adding to my vocabulary became
so annoying to read. The author also writes details of things that don't
matter to me or to the plot of the book. I had to skip entire paragraphs of
musical references that I didn't understand. I was looking forward to the
beautiful language in this book, but that, too, let me down.
BEEF:
Liesl is the eldest child, so she feels it is her duty to
look out for her younger siblings. Or that's what she would have you believe.
She makes this claim several times throughout the book, but it is obvious that
Liesl is jealous of her siblings. Her brother is in the spotlight playing
his violin while Liesl believes she should be there as well. Liesl's sister is
beautiful and flirtatious, and though Liesl claims to care about her, she also
mildly shames her. I understand Liesl is a rather plain character, but jealousy
doesn't look good on anyone. And if you don't like your position in the family,
change it.
Liesl is one of the most boring protagonists I have ever
read about. One of the most important things an author has to do is make their
readers care about the characters. And I did not care about what happened to
Liesl. She doesn't do anything to alter her fate, and she agrees to marry the
Goblin King because she's afraid of being alone. When she's not being a disappointment,
she's usually moping around or thinking about something I don't understand,
like the German language or musical terminology.
There's a whole section of the book where Liesl is just
wandering around the Underground bored out of her mind. That's boring to read
about! I don't want to read about a bored character unless something is about
to burst through the door, wrenching the character from their boredom with some
life-altering quest. Instead Liesl travels to the lake to look at it. Then she
has a dress made. Then we learn about the Goblin King's past brides and, though
beautiful, how utterly ordinary they were.
That's another issue. Liesl is described as plain, if not
ugly, and she's ridiculously bitter about it. Every time she sees someone
beautiful, she remembers how plain she is by comparison. It seems like the
author has some agenda to convince us that ugly girls are better simply because
they are ugly, even if they have no depth. The author tries to trick us into
thinking Liesl is extraordinary when the Goblin King compliments her, but she's
not fooling anybody.
The sequel, Shadowsong,
is scheduled to come out early next year, but I think I’ll pass.
--Reviewed by Miss Shayne
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