Rating: 
Summary: Tasty prose and memorable characters.
Review: This short novel, McKillip's essay on the nature of love, is compelling and absolutely coloratura writing. While always a wordsmistress of the most sensate and delectable turns of phrase, even from her earliest BEASTS OF ELD days, her prose here is much like the silken cobwebs and flushed floral beauties she tells of within. Some have said this little treasure is thin on plot, but this simply isn't so, although 'twould not be overly difficult to drown in the lush style. Ms. McKillip borrows classic fairy tale and ballad themes from sources as diverse, yet diffuse as Christina Rossetti's GOBLIN MARKET and TAM LIN. As always she draws marvelously realized characters and, while love triangles are the maudlinly mundane stuff of light romance and soap opera, few readers will leave Corbet, Laurel, and Rois of WINTER ROSE untouched and unmoved. McKillip is always uniquely herself, but readers of Robin McKinley, Donna Jo Napoli, A. S. Byatt, and the stellar fairy tale collections of Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, will find much to enjoy and savor here. An entrancing diversion for a stormy season.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant! Talented! Outstanding!
Review: Now comes a tale of a free- spirited girl that rhomps in the wood barefoot and her docile sister that spends nights in a cozy little house stiching lace for a wedding dress and is to be wed to her lover. Then comes a mysterious man who rides out of the wood on a horse the color Buttermilk to claim his inherritance, the so called cursed Lynn Hall. Both the women Rois and Laurel become consumed with his past and him. They will do and risk anything for him. The rest I cannot tell for you must read it for yourself. I thought this book was brilliant* It is so detailed and makes you fall in love with all the characters, good or bad. In mind no doubt I was wondering what woud happen next and how this book would end . In reading The Winter Rose I do not see how anyone could walk away and say that they were unchanged. I recommend this book to every one!
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating fantasy
Review: This book would be a wonderful read even without a plot due to Ms McKillip's remarkable prose. It does, however, have an interesting plot, and will definitely not be the last book of hers that I read. Do not miss it!
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Prose, Beautiful Book
Review: Yes, the writing is the loveliest I've ever encountered, with drifts and drifts of vivid words, lovely descriptions, poetry everywhere. Every sentence is a small work of art. In fact, the story is so beautifully written that it completely makes up for the wishy-washy ending, the occaisionally irritating characters, the fits and starts of characterization. The book is beautiful and often warm, but still a touch of cold and ice pervades the novel and its people, even in the warm moments. Somehow, the reader never really gets very close to the characters; they're beautiful and true, but distant; a work of art, but not real. Rois is a wonderful heroine, wild, calm, loving, wise, but something seems lacking in her, just the same. As do her counterpart sister, beautiful but tame, her sister's fiance, her father, even the handsome stranger Corbet himself. The characters of a story often reflect the character of their author; all of McKillip's people seem to have this strange, dreamy distance, much like Tanith Lee's characters are generally packed in fiery ice. Aloneness and dreaminess pervade this author's works. Oh, well, you can't have it all. The novel is lovely enough to make up for its odd coldness, and the characters, although seemingly trapped in the prose of the author, shine enough to make it all worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: A breathtaking plunge into faery!
Review: I'm surprised at the low reviews as well! This has to be one of the most enchanting books I've discovered in a long time. I'm constantly surprised and delighted by the lyrical prose of Patricia McKillip. I realize this is an overused line of praise but it is reinvented in this book. If there is any fantasy book, one should read this year it must be this book.
Rating:
Summary: Call me nuts, but this is my favorite McKillip book...
Review: For some reason, the rating for "Winter Rose" has turned up surprisingly low. I loved this book. It was absolutely breathtaking, and I was immediately hooked, for the first sentence to the last one. McKillip blends the Tam Lin story line with fantastic elements that are distant and beautiful. The characters' emotions are made very real (particularly Rois') and the ending was more than I had expected it to be...only Patricia could have handled it the way it was handled. This book is page after page of wonder. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful and elegant tale
Review: In a richly symbolic and atmospheric retelling of the ballad, Tam Lin, a young girl is tangled up in an old curse involving several generations of a family who have dwelled in the old house in the woods. Rois is drawn into the mystery by her curiosity of the handsome Corbet Lynn, newest resident of the house. Dreams and gems and roses are twined throughout Winter Rose in beautiful image after image created by McKillip's gorgeously lyrical prose. Not for everyone surely; ambiguous in bits and likely to bore a reader looking for a lot of action. However, for those who enjoyed Robin McKinley's Rose Daughter, this is the perfect read.
Rating:
Summary: The Rose, the Ivy, and the Gold
Review: Patricia McKillip shows her wonderful flair for a twisty, turning story line amidst multiple dimensions in fantastic worlds once again. Like her Cygnet stories, McKillip crafts Winter Rose with jewels and flowers, gold, and ivy vines. Rois Melior, the heroine of this novel, and her sister, Laurel are both enchanted by a new-comer to the town, Corbet Lynn, who not only inherits his grandfather's estate after a fifty-year abandonment, but also his grandfather's cursing as well. Rois and Corbet become entangled in the wood, magic, and a love triangle between Corbet, Laurel, and Rois. Find out who wis and who can come out of the magic alive.
Rating:
Summary: Great Use of Imagery
Review: I thought that this book used a wonderful use of description and imagery. There was no plot, but the description certainly made up for it. The only problem that I had with the book was it's ending. It seemed to abruptly stop. However, this leaves you to use your imagination. Overall, a truly amazing story.
Rating:
Summary: enchanting
Review: I find when I read Mckillip's books I am swept into a secret, magical space from which I do not wish to be distrubed. Winter Rose brought me to a forest much like the forests here, but seen with better eyes, with vision, not just sight. Slightly shifted from what we know, more magical, more dangerous, wilder, and more subtle, The forest both embraces you, and tangles you. The mystery is of people who enter this place, either in form or in dreams, whose ordinary lives are made extraordinary by rumor, vision, imagination, old sorrows and love. What is real? What is illusion? What are the unseen forces that enchant us, and decieve us and create our history? This is a story of one sister who sees, and one sister who reflects. A slightly less clearly written book than her others, but still rich, and vivid and exquisite, and as always, I hated to leave
|
