Winter Wood - Steve Augarde
All her memory came flooding back to her then, and all that had seemed so hazy and unreal was brought into focus. It had gone away for a while, this other world that she was somehow part of, but now it had returned to claim her and she was to be caught up in its dance yet again.
Robyn and I finally finished Augarde's excellent trilogy, and the third book is a wonderful conclusion to the story. I still can't understand why these books didn't get better marketing in the U.S. They've apparently done well enough in the U.K., but it was extremely difficult getting my hands on a copy of Winter Wood here, and I ended up buying it online from somebody in England. The trilogy is being repackaged as "The Touchstone Trilogy" with new covers for the U.S., so maybe it'll gain a following then. (Oddly, I don't think the trilogy had a name before this.) Personally, though, I love Augarde's own illustrations, which are classier and have an older, woodcut-style look to them. The new covers are likely to get lost on the shelves with other fantasy books.
Winter Wood fills in some of the gaps between Celandine's life and Midge's, and we finally see how the threads of the two stories intertwine. It is also, despite some tension and conflict, a less disheartening book than the first two (especially Celandine, in which Celandine seems doomed to misery). For the most part, it's very satisfying to finally see how everything turns out. However, there are a few parts (particularly near the end) which Robyn and I agreed were a little unnecessary, like one string of "is she dreaming?" scenes that were never fully explained.
That aside, this is definitely one of my new favorites and it's a series I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to fans of the fantastical.
Fed to jonathan's brain | August 27, 2008
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