It is never really clear whether Rois, the main character, is dreaming, has entered another reality or a sort of parallel world. While Winter Rose starts like a normal fantasy novel, as soon as reality starts to shift, the writing reads like a fever dream. I liked it a lot but can see why others might not have been equally charmed. It is a peculiar book and maybe not a typical McKillip because readers either love or hate it.

Winter Rose is a retelling of the Scottish tale of Tam Lin. Most of her books are out of print but you can easily get cheap used copies. McKillip’s books are lovely and enchanting and distinctly influenced by fairy tales. All of her novels are standalones or diptychs, with the exception of The Riddle Master Trilogy. Despite her many fans McKillip isn’t a fantasy writer with a huge commercial success, for the simple reason – I’m guessing – that she doesn’t write trilogies and series.

She is one of those writers who quietly write one novel after the other and every new book is greeted with a lot of enthusiasm by her fans. McKillip’s The Forgotten Beast of Eld, I wanted to read another of her books. Of son’s murdering fathers, of homes fallen to ruin, and of a curse that, as winter draws in, is crawling from the frozen forest to engulf them all.Įver since I read Patricia A. His pale green eyes fill her thoughts and her dreams are consumed by tales of his family’s dark past. And then I blinked and saw his face more clearly.’ From that moment, Rois is obsessed with Corbett Lynn. And then as something shaping out of the light.

But I saw him first – as a fall of light. McKillip (The Book of Atrix Wolf, and winner in 1975 of a World Fantasy Award for her novel The Forgotten Beasts of Eld) weaves a dense web of desire and longing, human love and inhuman need.They said later that he rode into the village on a horse the colour of buttermilk. The pace here is deliberate and sure, with no false steps the writing is richly textured and evocative. To save her sister as well as Corbet, Rois will have to come to terms with the secret of her own changeling identity. When Corbet disappears, Laurel begins to sicken and fade. As Laurel falls hard for Corbet, Rois searches for the truth about the Lynns, but the answers she finds lead only to more questions. Despite her attraction to Corbet, Rois is warned by her otherworldly senses that he is not what he seems. Now Tearle's son, Corbet, has come home to rebuild crumbling Lynn Hall. Decades ago, according to village gossip, Tearle Lynn murdered his father and mysteriously disappeared. But both Rois, who narrates, and Laurel fall under the spell of the stranger who enters their world. Woods-wise and free-spirited, Rois Melior is the opposite of her sensible sister, Laurel.

Winter rose mckillip