Genre: Fantasy Fiction, Young adult fiction, Dystopian Fiction, text in translation (French)
Key Stage: Upper KS3/KS4
Rating: ★★★★★
The Mirror Visitor: A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos (2013)
The worlds shattered after the mysterious Rupture. Arks, each possessing clans and their own gifts. And mysterious, eternal family spirits that own a sacred Book, almost always untouchable, unreadable.
Whisked from her homely museum on Anima, to the frozen and harsh climates of the Pole, Ophelia gets a lot more than was bargained from her arranged marriage to a huge bulk of a man: Thorn. Equipped with her unique expertise of reading any relic or object; and a curious talent of travelling through mirrors, Ophelia must fight to survive in the cold politics of the court. Who can you trust when everyone’s hiding their motives? When even your own family have sinister bindings to dark political influences?
I must say, this book is absolutely astonishing. I did not expect the number of details (none of them are superfluous though- everything is linked to something…) and how not everything is what it seems. As a reader, this went sky-rise beyond all my expectations: the characters are startlingly human and very, very intricately developed, the plot is seamlessly crocheted together and the fantasy world that’s been created- it’s just beautiful. Even by the end of book one, nothing is given away- the reader still doesn’t know almost anything on the characters! And the short snippets on the characters are very intense and foreshadowing.
Overall, I think this book has a subtle yet musical steampunk sort of vibe, and I’d give it more than 5 stars if I could. If you’re a fan of His Dark Materials or The Hunger Games, you might like this book.
The full Quartet will be available in the LRC late January 2021.
Reviewer: Muslimah, Year 9