A Winter's Tale

Description

174 pages
$16.95
ISBN 1-894283-45-7
DDC jC813'.6

Year

2004

Contributor

Reviewed by Melanie Marttila

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Review

Set in the fictional country of Hinterlьnd, A Winter’s Tale, which
continues the story from Sobat’s earlier young-adult novel Ingamald,
relates how the vicious and self-styled Lord Morton Cornelius Winter
perverts, manipulates, tortures, and murders his way to power. Once
there, he issues edicts prohibiting reading and writing, midwifery and
healing arts, and most especially magic. Witch and book burnings ensue.
Those with talent or power are collected and used by Winter to his own
ends. Waging guerilla warfare against Winter are the witch Ingamald, a
ragtag group of musica (gypsies), a learned (scholar), a fire-breather,
and a telekinetic girl with fingers six and six.

Sobat includes enough of the story of her first novel to give
significance to the events of A Winter’s Tale, but not so much that
those details slow the momentum of the plot. Her use of archetype is
classic, yet fresh. The denouement paves the way for the further
adventures of Ingamald and Yda, the telekinetic girl.

It is not surprising that Sobat is also a published poet. Her use of
language is beautifully evocative. Her characters speak in ways that
indicate their relative classes and levels of education, but also,
collectively, they create the illusion of otherness. Her phrasing and
structure, together with the names of her characters and towns, recall
German or old English.

A Winter’s Tale is an excellent novel that transcends genre, will
appeal to adult as well as young-adult readers. Highly recommended.

Citation

Sobat, Gail Sidonie., “A Winter's Tale,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed October 14, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/22470.