A Winter's Promise

A Winter's Promise (Book One of the Mirror Visitor Quartet)

By Christelle Dabos

Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima and, what’s more, she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan. Ophelia must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presence of her inscrutable future husband, Ophelia slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.

The World of the Arks

Long ago, following a cataclysm called the Rupture, the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands, now known as arks. Over each, the spirit of an omnipotent and immortal ancestor abides. The inhabitants of these arks each possess a unique power. Ophelia, with her ability to read the pasts of objects, must navigate this fantastic, disjointed, perilous world using her trademark tenacity and quiet strength. 

 I found myself intrigued by the book description and sale pitches ("Game of Thrones meets Pride and Prejudice!"), and checked it out.  I was having trouble with this entry anyway, since BookTok seems to exist solely to promote popular dreck, and I'd read mostly everything I was at all intrigued by. And I'm in the middle of Innocents Abroad, which is fine, I'm enjoying it, but it's also as long as the universe, and I'm still in Italy, despite reading for almost two weeks. Anyway, I wanted a bit of change, although Winter's Promise is also long. 

I really regretted it for at least the first 40% of the book.  Let me summarize it for you: Ophelia finds out she has to marry someone from the Pole, she mopes around, breaks things (accidentally), says very little, mopes around, breaks more things, gets yelled at, mopes around, gets packed up and shipped up north, and is warned no one can be trusted, she mopes around, breaks more things, tries to find a bit of adventure out there, is verbally and physically abused, they move, repeat ad infinitum.  There's no sense of development, achieving anything in the first half of the book.  Ophelia is a chess piece, basically, and just goes where she's put.  (Breaking things as she goes, all the fucking time).  I honestly am not even entirely sure of the point of the first half of the book, or why we spend any time on Anima, her home ark.  It all seems very dreary and pointless, and it's not helped because we're basically housebound on the north pole for most of it. Plus, and this was really only an issue for me in the first few chapters, the characters have weird fakeish conversations where they spout out worldbuilding information instead of letting us arrive at it more naturally. The scenes with her godfather really grated on me.  

And Ophelia herself is a difficult heroine to root for: she has no power (within the setting she's placed, she has magical mirror/object reading powers), she's apparently disliked or hated by everyone she meets, she doesn't listen to good advice, and she has no self-determination or autonomy - she spends almost every minute in the book just getting manipulated or moved into scenarios by various people around her, and letting things happen to her (to be fair, the one time she tries to get out on her own it ends disastrously, but what can you expect when you go out adventuring and you know you have a bad sense of direction and make no effort to have a safe route home). It feels repetitive and aimless.

And yet, for all that, I found myself really getting into the last half of the book.  It picks up dramatically when we've moved once again, to Clairdelune, the "protected" sanctuary of the Ambassador, where Ophelia has to pretend to be a valet, and there are other characters to interact with.  There's actually some inklings of a plot, some activity, more development, etc., etc. And then we hit a denouement (where we find out that we have to move because Ophelia screwed the pooch again) and then the book ends, abruptly, literally in an elevator on the way to see someone. I mean, I guess it worked, since I;m checking out book 2, but it's not what I would call a really enjoyable experience.  I just can't foresee myself ever wanting to re-read this book, even if I ultimately enjoy the series.  

And don't get me started on Ophelia and Thorn's relationship. Maybe I have the benefit of being able to read the dust jackets, so I know they end up together, but her whole attitude towards him also was frustrating to read: she's terrified of him, he's cold to her, she acts out, she kind of depends on him a bit, she thinks he's in love with her (and didn't that seem like just wishful thinking), she's immediately appalled, she's "rude" to him (rude for Ophelia is telling people who are virtual strangers that you don't love them), then she finds out he's kept things from her (OBVIOUSLY) and she's so offended she treats him like public enemy number one.  Duh, he's been lying to you, Ophelia, for one, he's told you exactly jack shit about anything going on.  And you don't love him anyway, and seem horrified by the idea that he loves you (although that seems out of character for him) so CHILL.  It's like, the only decisions Ophelia makes are bad ones.  

Anyway, aside from those three problems (pacing, drippy heroine, drippy heroine who acts out against the hero solely for angst purposes) the world building is actually interesting, seems kind of internally coherent, and I'm interested enough to keep going, at least for now.  But I really can't stand another book that drags on, just beating up on drippy Ophelia the whole time.  Aaaaaand I just read reviews for the next three books and yep, looks like I'm going to be massively disappointed.   Le sigh.

 11: A #BookTok Recommendation