This is a very pretty book but it has - not exactly annoyed me, but it's not to my mind pretty enough to warrant the £9.99 price tag, and there isn't enough story to justify it either. It is not a good sign when an explanation of what you've just read takes almost as long as the story it explains, non of which is a reflection on Clarke's writing which is as perfectly crafted as ever.
Victoria Sawdon's illustrations are charming enough but you'd have to like them a lot more than I do to buy the book for them (my copy is a review one from Bloomsbury, which I'll pass on to a hopefully more enthusiastic colleague). I liked 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' but (ironically given how short this is) thought it was over long - The Woods at Midwinter is imagined in the same world, it is very much for fans of both Clarke and 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'.
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This would have worked beautifully as an add on in an exclusive edition, and as it stands will probably find itself in any number of Christmas stockings (or equivalent, we're a stocking family for this kind of thing), there will be people who love it, are entranced by the images, and feel very happy with their purchase, but I'm in a full on Scrooge mood with this one to the point that I've deleted several mean spirited sentences, but in the end I can't even bring myself to really be down on the publisher for producing it. What I do know is that it's bothered me enough to write this to get it off my chest.
Completely agree with you on this one. It's nice enough, but if one compares it to her magnum opus, or even Piranesi, it's just very slight. I got it from the library, but even so it seems like a story to anchor a short story collection, not a stand-alone work.
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