Midwinterblood

In this audio collection of seven stories, two characters act as the connecting fibers. Julian Rhind-Tutt strengthens those fibers with a stellar narration that exudes mystery and intrigue through meticulous pacing and selective emphasis. As each story takes the audience back further in time, Rhind-Tutt adjusts his dialect and tone to match the period, characters, and events. He simultaneously maintains consistency in the connecting narrative, which focuses on the return of the two souls, Merle and Eric, as well as recurring symbols like the hares, apples, and dragon flowers. The atmospheric music that signals each story shift adds suspense, but it's the passion of Rhind-Tutt's reading that makes this audiobook extraordinary--and one not to be missed by listeners of any age. J.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 17, 2012
“I always prefer a walk that goes in a circle.... Don’t you?” a woman named Bridget says to her daughter, Merle, at one point in this heady mystery that joins the remote northern setting of Sedgwick’s Revolver with the multigenerational scope of his White Crow. Sedgwick appears to share Bridget’s sentiment: as he moves backward through time in seven interconnected stories—from the late 21st century to an unspecified ancient era—character names, spoken phrases, and references to hares, dragons, and sacrifice reverberate, mutate, and reappear. Set on a mysterious and isolated Nordic island, the stories all include characters with variations on the names of Eric and Merle. In a present-day story about an archeological dig, Eric is a oddly strong, brain-damaged teenager and Merle his mother; in the 10th century, when the island was inhabited by Vikings, Eirek and Melle are young twins, whose story answers questions raised by what the archeologists discover. Teenage characters are few and far between, but a story that’s simultaneously romantic, tragic, horrifying, and transcendental is more than enough to hold readers’ attention, no matter their age. Ages 12–up.