Other notable award winning books include Floodland, Marcus’ first novel, which won the Branford-Boase Award in 2001, a prize for the best debut novel for children published in the UK each year; My Swordhand is Singing, which won the Booktrust Teenage Prize for 2007, and Lunatics and Luck, part of The Raven Mysteries series, which won a Blue Peter Book Award in 2011. nisu čitali "Red Shift" Alana Garnera u kome je osnovna ideja ovog romana obrađena mnogo, mnogo, mnogo bolje.

Once I got about 50 pages into MIDWINTERBLOOD, I was hooked and read the rest of the book – it’s rather short, just so you know – in one sitting. Behind them grew a tree, an odd tree, with a straight trunk, and a pointed crown of brilliant green leaves. It is also listed as Young Adult and even won a Printz Award for "excellence in young adult literature", but to be honest, I don't know why. His books have been shortlisted for many awards, including The GUARDIAN CHILDREN'S FICTION AWARD, the BLUE PETER BOOK AWARD, the CARNEGIE MEDAL and the EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD. There was no character or relationship development, there were no struggles or issues or themes or messages.Midwinterblood is broken up into seven different stories, about an archaelogist, a pilot, a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a viking. The Book of Dead Days was nominated for the Guardian Award, and was shortlisted for the Sheffield Book Award and the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Recommended for: fans of Monstrous Beauty, When the Sea is Rising Red, and other dark literary YA, and for adults who may want to try out some quality young adult fiction.

Ultimately, Midwinterblood reminded me of Romeo and Juliet and The Lottery with a dash of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, minus all plot and with poorly drawn characters whose sole identifying characteristics are relationships through seven generations. In fact, in a sense, it isn’t truly just young adult fiction – it is young adult, it is middle grades, it is adult. It only took about a page before I was sucked into the story; the novel is very intriguing and once you start you won’t want to put it down. There's a lot of weighted mood here, a lot of pain, but all of it is crafted into something absolutely stellar.

Now, that sounds a lot worse than it actually is: this story isn’t really about attachment to the characters but much more plot and theme driven. More strangely, it's the sort of place where a rare orchid grows that appears to cure wounds, allow people to live unnaturally long lives, and have a strange effect on the mind. Although I read a great many books for sheer entertainment value, it's coming across an author like Marcus Sedgwick that reminds me how very formulaic many YA books tend to be.

Its themes are also simple: reincarnation, forgetting/remembering, separation, and acceptance (as Erik keeps saying throughout the book, "And so it is"). In fact, the seven stories inside its pages revolve around death and include monsters, myths, witches, ghosts, and bombs. As is always going to be the case with short stories, some caught my imagination more than others, but they were all pretty compelling and well-written. please do yourself a favor and dont read any spoilers, any reviews, even so much as a blurb; just read this asap! Their love is strong, however, and through seven lifetimes and seven incarnations they seek to find each other, to reunite in a loving embrace.

I will say that this has made my mind up about needing to read the author's other books, I already have Revolver sitting on my shelf and I plan on getting to it as soon as possible. It starts in 2073 with 2 characters, and you get to hear their lives all the way back to the 9th century. I sa svakom novom pričom, polako popunjavam praznine i gomilu pitanja koja su mi se stvorila u glavi. VERDICT: An unexpected book, but not without a few issues, MIDWINTERBLOOD is a chilling but enthralling story that pulls you in with ghosts, vampires, and murder, and refuses to let you go until you realize that every word makes sense in the great scheme of things.