DNF Review – A Winters Promise (The Mirror Visitor, Book 1) by Christelle Dabos (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 14 hours and 43 minutes
Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC
Release Date: May 22, 2019
ASIN: B07S46MX29
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Mirror Visitor series
Source: Borrowed Audiobook from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars
“Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima, and, what’s more, she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan.
She must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presence of her inscrutable future husband, she slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.”
Series Info/Source: This is the 1st book in The Mirror Visitor series. I borrowed this on audiobook from my library.
Thoughts: I ended up setting this aside 60% of the way through. I borrowed this on audiobook and the loan time expired, I decided not to renew it because it was fairly boring. It started out intriguing but nothing much happened as the story went on.
Ophelia can read the history of objects with her hands and travel through mirrors. She is plain and quiet and greatly enjoys helping to run the museum in Anima. Then she finds out she is being forced to marry a man from the north named Thorn. When he arrives he is taciturn and abrupt and doesn’t seem to want Ophelia as his wife anymore than she wants him for a husband. However, when they arrive in the north, Thorn wants to keep Ophelia a secret and it seems there are dangerous political games in play.
I enjoyed the first few chapters of this book. Opehlia is quiet, yet practical and tough in her own way. Initially her trip to the North seems like it will be a grand adventure. However, once she gets there the pace of the story becomes truly glacial (to match the cold weather?). Ophelia finds herself locked away with Thorn’s aunt, hidden from the world. She gets small glimpses of politics outside her seclusion and mostly she fights boredom. She was not along in her struggle with boredom, I was right there beside her wondering when something was going to happen.
I did enjoy the small glimpses I got of this world, but it continued to feel a bit underdeveloped to me (maybe because we were never part of it). I think Thorn has potential to be an interesting character (we do get a couple glimpses of something more to him), but you don’t see enough of him to really make a judgement at all. Ophelia was frustrating as well. She shows a couple of glimpses of rebellion but mostly she just sits around with her chaperon waiting for something to happen.
In the end I just didn’t have the patience for this. Since the audiobook was due to return, I just returned it. I didn’t love this enough to try to crunch and put in time to finish it, or enough to buy a copy to finish it. The audiobook was well done and I enjoyed the narration.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this has promise but just moved so slowly. I think the world could be intriguing if we had gotten to see more of it. I think Ophelia and Thorn have potential to be interesting if they just did something. I just have more intriguing books to read on my shelf. I don’t plan on picking this up again and don’t plan on reading more books by this author.
