Hi ForeverBookers,
How are you? I hope you’re well.
I’ve just finished reading “A Winter’s Promise” by Christelle Dabos and I enjoyed it as a whole. It was too long, I thought. Whether this was a translation issue because it’s translated from French, I don’t know but there were definitely parts that could have been taken out and it wouldn’t have made the plot not work. Also, the characters weren’t all fleshed out, I didn’t think.
3 stars!
A Winter’s Promise tells the story of Ophelia, a young girl that works in a museum, who gets taken to the Citaceleste, which is on another Ark, the Pole to the one she lives on, Anima. I thought of the arks as different countries on Earth, like Anima is England and the Pole is a cold Australia. She gets sent there by her family, who don’t really like her. Her mother in particular doesn’t think much of her. However her Great-Uncle does think lots of her. He offers support at the beginning of the novel. From the beginning of “A Winter’s Promise,” we learn that Ophelia is to be engaged to a man from the Pole, a different Ark. She has to move to the Pole, to the Citaceleste where Thorn, her intended is from. Is she okay with this move? Other main characters include Berenilde, a woman that we’re not meant to be certain about throughout, I believe. Archibald, another character that raises questions and Aunt Rosaline, Ophelia’s aunt who travels with her from Anima to the Citaceleste. As well as minor characters, like Freya, and Mother Hildegard. There’s also a few funny moments from characters such as Fox and Gail, two characters that Ophelia befriends while at the Pole. There are many secrets revealed and some yet to be revealed to Ophelia and some other characters, I feel in book 2. I don’t know when I’ll read that yet.
I read “A Winter’s Promise” for a few Readathons/Reading Challenges. They were:
Reading Rivalry, which is Sarah J Maas themed this month - Seasonal Courts - Spring, Summer, Winter, Autumn - because A Winter’s Promise has a season in the title and the Pole, where most of the novel is set is a winter setting.
2024 Always Fully Booked Reading Challenge - A book about a vacation or trip - While A Winter’s Promise isn’t about the trip as such, it’s about Ophelia moving to a new place and working out the dynamics of that place, so it works in my eyes.
Reading Rainbow Challenge 2024 - Blue. Nearly all of the cover for “A Winter’s Promise” is blue!
Spoilers Below
Well, where do I start. This book is very complex. I thought it was a middle grade when I started it, but I soon learnt that it wasn’t. After Ophelia moves to the Pole, she gets hate from Freya who’s Thorn’s, her intended’s sister. Thorn isn’t full siblings with Freya, though. He’s seen as an outcast because his mother wasn’t from the Pole, but a Chronicler so from another clan.
An important part of “A Winter’s Promise” is, I think, where Ophelia learns about a certain book that the family spirit of the Dragon’s (Thorn’s family,) Lord Farouk, who’s also the father of Berenilde’s baby wants. He wants Ophelia to get information from it for him with her power. She can read objects through touch. She doesn’t do this within this novel, we’re just told she can. I hope we see it in the next novel in the series. Archibald, the head of the Citaceleste, is hated by Thorn, who thinks he’s evil. “Ophelia better understood why Thorn and Berenilde were protecting her from him: Archibald’s way of life consisted of leading women to commit adultery. He got all of his female guests into his bed, and then spoke to their husbands with staggering candor.” More than this, Archibald actually gets someone to come in and reveal secrets about said Book.
“Where is the original, signore?”
“Only Farouk knows. Let’s make do with this copy for now. What I need to be sure of first is that you’re up to this translation. Our Lord officially charged me with distributing it to all my relations, but he’s losing patience, and I’m harboring under my roof of a female competitor who wants to beat me to it. So I’m in rather a hurry.
“Come, come,” the stranger said in his reedy little voice, laughing nervously. “I may be the best, but don’t expect miracles from me! To this day, no one has ever deciphered the Book of a family spirit, what I can propose to you is a statistical study of all the distinctive features of this document: the number of signs, the frequency of each one, the size of the spacing. Then I could proceed to a comparative study of the other reproductions, of which I am the proud owner.
“And that’s it? You’ve traveled across the world at my expense to inform me of what I already know?” Archibald’s tone didn’t betray any annoyance, but there was something about honeyed diction that seemed to make the stranger uneasy.
“Forgive me, signore, but no one can be expected to do the impossible. What I can assure you is that the more we compare, the more the overall statistics gain in precision. Perhaps one day we’ll succeed in getting some logic to emerge from the chaos of this alphabet?”
“And you’re described as the best in your discipline!” sighed Archibald with disappointment. “We are wasting each other’s time, sir. Allow me to see you out.”
Ophelia hid behind the marble bust while the two men left the library. As soon as the door was closed, she tiptoed over to the lectern. A huge book was resting on it. It was so like the one in Artemis’s archives that it would be hard to tell them apart. With her reader’s gloved fingertips, she carefully turned the pages. There were the same enigmatic arabesques, the same silent story, the same skin-like texture. The expert was right, this reproduction was a small masterpiece.
So there were other books across the arks? If that little stranger were to be believed, each family spirit possessed a copy, and if Archibald were to be believed, Lord Farouk had a burning desire to decipher his own.”
Perturbed, Ophelia had a sudden premonition. The pieces of an astounding jigsaw puzzle were falling into place in her mind.”
The jigsaw that Ophelia is trying to work out is the importance of this Book. This is the most significant part of the novel for me, because it’s where the main secret of the Book is discussed, but what is this book? It looks like Artemis, Ophelia’s family spirit’s book, but there’s something more to it. It’s not revealed in “A Winter’s Promise.” If for nothing else I’ll keep reading the series to find out what the significance of it is!
Ophelia has two friendships within the Citaceleste. One being with Fox, an elderly servant/hand, and the other being Gail, a female mechanic. These two are friends before Ophelia comes to the Citaceleste. Will their relationship develop as the series goes on? You’ll need to read to find out! I enjoyed reading Fox and Ophelia’s friendship. It was nice to see a platonic relationship between a female and male character, as in most books I read, there aren’t many friendships between men and women.
Ophelia has trouble with a lot of characters, however. Before going to the Citaceleste, Ophelia is staying at Thorn’s family estate. Here, she meets Berenilde and Thorn’s grandmother. These two characters don’t like Ophelia and cause her lots of issues throughout the rest of the book. For example, the grandmother tries to kill Ophelia, at one point. Why? You’ll have to read to find out! This was when I realised the novel certainly wasn’t middle grade! Berenilde is a sketchy character that we’re not meant to be sure what her intentions towards Ophelia, or Thorn truly are. I believe she’s not all she seems for the bad instead of the good but we’ll see…
Overall then, while I enjoyed “A Winter’s Promise,” I found the text very waffly, like it was trying to get to a certain point but just never quite got there. It could have done with being made far more concise. I enjoyed Ophelia, Thorn and even Berenilde but I wish we’d gotten more from them. That’s why I’m giving A Winter’s Promise 3 stars! I enjoyed it but it could have been cut down by at least 100 pages, I think, but this is the first book in a 4 book series so the next books might be better! There are a few more twists and turns to the plot of A Winter’s Promise, but the main one I’ve detailed above.
I’m currently in the middle of a romance book, which I’ll not review in great depth but I’ll probably still put my thoughts and feelings in a separate post.
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