Winterlong: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Elizabeth Hand is the BEST
Review: Elizabeth hand is the best, Iv read all her books and lover her love her love her. She has the most brilliant stories, charicters and atmospheres. Every fantasisy world she creates has an unparraleled feeling of infinite possibility. I really hope she writes another story like Winterlong

Rating:
Summary: darkly beautiful
Review: I have never read something so completely jarring and overwhelming as this. I initially picked it up in a used bookstore before going on a trip as something to pass the timed and quickly became mired in the words and feelings and depth of this timeless piece of work. The reader feels the characters, the setting, the stories in a way that no other writer I dare say is capable of, with the exception of maybe Thomas Harris. But just like other novelists of her caliber, Elizabeth hand is underrated and forgotten all too quickly. Her writing is timeless, and this novel is the best example.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping yet ultimately unfulfilling
Review: I truly enjoy Hand's writing - lyrical, expressive and detailed. As an example of her early work, this novel is a phenomenal piece of writing. Her characters are magnificent and she breaks just about every taboo you can think of without losing her sense of style. However, I found the ending to drag slightly, as she had left a great many loose ends to tie up. At this point I often found myself loosing sight of the plot. Certainly worth a read, but I would recommend Aestival Tide and Glimmering over it.

Rating:
Summary: Shattering
Review: One of the several works of Elizabeth Hand's that I picked up after being inspired by "Waking the Moon," this novel left me with a sense of chilled desolation. The characters touched a nerve that I don't want to feel again. Although I probably could not read "Winterlong" again, I am glad for the experience, and still give it high marks for its creative integrity and Ms. Hand's remarkable style.

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Summary: Winterlong - a poignant tale of dark beauty
Review: This book impressed me so much that I've read literally every novel published by Ms. Hand since. The story has the feel of a gothic fairy tale. Such elements as a girl with Death in her eyes, ancient prophecies and a world that is, in equal measures, hi-tech wonderland, post-acopalyptic waste and fantastic feudal realm, Hand has transcended many of the standard boundaries around science fiction. In fact, if I were forced to name the genre of this novel, I would call it gothic sci-fi.

If you like painfully beautiful, ambisexual, amoral characters, then you should *definitely* check this book out. A must-read for fans of Anne Rice's _Interview With the Vampire_, as this book captures the feel of that novel in a way that Rice hasn't been able to since

Rating:
Summary: Rich, deep and satisfying.
Review: This is the kind of science fiction novel you do not see very often any more. Elizabeth Hand has managed to combine elements of mythology and weird fiction with cybernetic SF and spiced the brew with luxuriant blossoms from the garden of the Decadents. I say it this way because people have misunderstood so much. You cannot think Anne Rice when you read Elizabeth Hand. Yes, one can identify scraps of H.P. Lovecraft, Christina Rossetti and especially Tanith Lee, but Hand is not trying to write like anyone but herself.

And I'm only midway through the first chapter.

Rating:
Summary: WINTERLONG
Review: Winterlong is a stunning, artfull, full throtle novel of unbelievable depth and style. Written with more imagination than most writers can muster in a lifetime, this is a novel that will leave you completely fulfilled and aching for more. Hand has created a civilization struggling to find it's place in a broken world that cuts so close to truth as to be disturbing. READ THIS BOOK!

Rating:
Summary: Dark and Serious Sci-Fi
Review: Words, like shadows in a forest, evade me: they are tangled in the web of thoughts and feelings I felt while reading this masterpiece of post-apocalyptic beauty and horror. This is not light reading; it draws on mythic sources and tranmutes them into a world so darkly beautiful and rich, it's almost tangible. It will draw you in with its seductive, elegiac tone, reminiscent of the best writing from Anne Rice and, dare I say it, Edgar Allen Poe! Your mind will linger in this world long after the story is through, and you will keep the book near you while you read it so that you will be reminded that it is not a dream. Read this book and be forever changed.