Sedgwick has this ability to create atmosphere in only a few sentences where other authors need paragraphs upon paragraphs (if they manage it at all).

It’s a circuitous book that makes sense only if you read the entire book from beginning to end, taking note of every instance of their lives, especially noting the very last vignette and the happenings of the beginning (well, it is the beginning – the beginning is the end is the beginning is the end is a Smashing Pumpkins song with some more endings).None of the main characters were teenagers or younger, and there were no themes that were YA centred. I have heard good things about Marcus Sedgwick, so when we were offered the chance to review Midwinterblood, I jumped at the chance. As they die, they remember all their lives together and the perfect moments they have shared as they become one with each other in eternal love.

Just then, Merle appears on the scene and, thinking quickly, frees Eric by slashing the sacrificial knife at his captors.

In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a ritual sacrifice takes place. The story of the pilot shot down and sheltered by the islanders never really gets going, and the first story, which should propel the novel's backward momentum, stutters and falters. Except, it is not the first time they meet and even though the story starts in the future (in 2073), the root of it all lies in the very distant past – and each subsequent story goes back a bit in time going back to when it all started.

Marcus Sedgwick's Midwinterblood is a collection of seven interlocking shorts or vignettes that follow a set of characters through multiple reincarnations. The book travels back in time telling the story of Merle and Eric's previous reincarnations via short stories, which means we see their characters in many different roles and come across many different facets of their personality. In The Airman they didn't even meet, Eric was married to some other woman he loved (so much for his everlasting love for Merle!

Merle freaks out and goes to his grave every night to weep, until eventually she goes mad and imagines that if she turns into a hare, she and Erik can be together again. Then, there is the fact that this is a love story that acknowledges many different types of love and this is what moved the book from simply good to awesome for me. I was more interested in the mysteries of the island and its secretive inhabitants than the love story between the two MC's.