This review is copy-paste from the Charybdis. You can see it in it's natural habitat here :I knew right from the first chapter that this was going to be my eerie-fest of the month. I mean honestly, the story starts with… well. You’ll just have to find out.Tomas and Peter are humble woodcutters, burying themselves in the woodlands outside of Chust, a small town hemmed in by the darkness of the great forest. They share everything in the sparse area, except for the past behind one secret. A long wooden box belonging to Tomas. Peter is never allowed to look within his father’s box, but as strange occurences herald the coming of the winter, the contents prove more important than he ever could have known. A man of Chust is slain… and then another… and then another. In horribly gruesome ways. But no one will acknowledge it as a terrible magic until the coming of the gypsies. Peter and an enigmatic, alluring Gypsy girl enter into several long deep nights of terror and discovery in a story of vampires, night queens, and deep winter.I LURVE a good scary book. Personal favorite is Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Anyway, ze town librarian recommended I pick up this slim Sedgwick volume and take it for a ride in the days before Halloween, to usher in the fool spookiness of the season. And I did. And it was awesome. I’ve never read any Sedgwick books before, but his writing style was beautiful and full of incredible descriptions of the night. Plus, he did some incredible research into vampire legends in the bleak landscapes of Eastern Europe. And what could possibly be more awesome than zombie-esque vampires? Other than zombie-esque werewolves of course.The writing style was detached, but you still felt for the characters. Reading it like a classic fairy tale, if not an incredibly dark one. I cannot recommend My Swordhand is Singing for people weak in the knees, weak at heart, or at all unnerved by bloody death scenes. I was just a little jumpy after tucking in *cough* two in the morning *cough* after the conclusion. But. Completely and totally worth it. I might have even cried a little at the end.Definitely a recommendation, although I kind of have the feeling this is the sort of book you love or hate. Just make sure you have time to read it all in one night. Preferably while not alone in the Transylvanian forest. 6.7 out of 7 Epic Magical Swords! Plus. Awesome cover.Inter-Library Loaning Every Other Sedgwick book I can find,Aella Siofra
Reviewed by Natalie Tsang for TeensReadToo.comMarcus Sedgwick's MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING is a dark novel with a heavy emphasis on thick, snowy forests of Eastern Europe, gypsies, and superstitious town folk. It is the perfect setting for a scary story, but it is also much, much more. Tomas and his teenage son, Peter, are a pair of traveling woodcutters with a mysterious past that settle down in the village of Chust one winter. Before long a string a deaths strike the village. Peter is perturbed by the villagers' strange reactions to the occurrences. When he asks Tomas about them, his father brushes away his questions as silly folk lore. However, Tomas is also doing his own share of strange things, like digging a trench around their home and filling it with moving water. When Agnes, a girl Peter likes, is symbolically married to a dead man and shut up in a remote hut, Peter tries to rescue her and runs into a monster. Sedgwick takes pains to distance his tale from the gentleman bloodsucker that Anne Rice and authors like her have embedded into pop culture. The word "vampire" is never mentioned and the vampires, themselves, have varying appearances throughout the novel. He does a great job at weaving various and sometimes seemingly paradoxical pieces of folk lore. This gives the story a great sense of immediacy and realism. Sedgwick also shifts the focus from vampires to people who have to deal with terrifying occurrences at home. The buildup of the growing atmosphere of fear and denial will have readers biting their fingernails. Marcus Sedgwick seems to take a lot of risks in writing this atypical, historically rich vampire novel. Central to the story line is not the relationship between a human and vampire or a girl and a boy (a la Buffy and Angel), but a wounded relationship between father and son. While this may seem terribly uncool, the realism of this relationship is what grounds the novel and makes the more fantastical elements more believable and scary.
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A delightful little novella that calls to mind earlier, darker Grimm's fairy tales before they were sanitized for children's consumption. Sedgwick plays with old European superstitions remarkably well and I was reading this I thought how wonderfully this would do as a dark fairy tale movie that's become so popular these days a la Snow White and the Huntsman, only done much better. I think a good comparison to this novella would be as the young adult version of Angela Carter's excellent feminist fairy tale reworkings in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, a book that captivated me when I first read it in my later teens, and then captivated me again in Neil Jordan's excellent film adaptation The Company of Wolves, which to me hands down is still the best movie version of a dark fairy tale made to date. I'd very happily suggest this book to any fans of vampires that want to get away from the sparkly pretty boy or the goth punk that seems so popular these days.
—Leslee
I have become a bit cynical lately concerning the vampire story. To me, is has been overflated, becoming a punchline to a really bad joke. MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING added little to the pantheon of vampire stories, but it did leave this reader feeling as Mr. Sedwick was going somewhere with this world of his. Granted, the ending did little to affirm that he stands alone as King of Vampire Mountain. But, the way he told his story impacted me. Sure cliches abound. But what he does with the cliches impressed me. His desolate, 17th century world is lush with descriptive images, characters that seem to matter, and a story arch that shows planning. I credit authors that take the time to do the basics in writing. Now I'm no YA scholar, but, it seems to me, that this novel could get young readers imitating what writing should be, not what is so impossibly adored with that sparkly vampire novel. Unfortuantely, even with all I've said, Mr. Sedgwick didn't impress me enough to want to read the continuance of this story. Perhaps, I am too harsh on YA novels.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (for the vampire fan...and aspiring YA novelists)
—TK421
I loved this 17th century, Eastern European vampire tale. For me the story evoked the feeling of Peter and the Wolf, a classic that I first came to adore as a wee lad. The ending - rather the fact that I had reached the end of the book - was bittersweet. I enjoyed the experience of reading Segwick's tale so much that when there were no more words to consume, I felt a bit empty, as if I'd experienced a loss. That's the hallmark of a good book, at least for me. The push-pull of loving the story but not wanting to admit the final chapter has been closed. It isn't relevant to this review, but I did purchase the book at a shop in Port Angeles, Washington. A fact I believe bears some elaboration. The shop as well as the entire town are still riding the Twilight Saga's wave. To wit, this quaint little shop was adorned in all things Twilight, from life-sized cardboard cutouts of the various characters to t-shirts and other teen-vampire baubles. When I found the copy of My Swordhand is Singing, as I often will do, using my phone, I checked some of the reader reviews on Amazon. The review that pushed me into the purchase said something to this effect: If you're tired of sparkling vampires and want to return to the roots the vampire myths and legends, pick up a copy of Marcus Segwick's book. I wasn't particularly tired of twinkling teen vamps but I believe I knew what the reviewer was getting at and I am ever so glad I heeded the advice.
—Chad
