Monday, September 02, 2013

A new student review of Black Spring

bookgirl1289 posted a new student review of Black Spring . See the full review.

Black Spring is beautifully written and has a plot that will make you want to keep reading even if you know how Wuthering Heights ends (I read a summary of Wuthering Heights because I was really curious about what happened in it, but you can understand this book just fine even if you don't know the story). Some things in this story are the same, but the magic element and strange traditions of the northern plateau make the story different in an interesting way, and there are characters in Black Spring that are much more likable.

Croggon is a wonderful writer and describes the landscape so vividly that it seems terrifying and real. I think she has improved on the original character of Cathy, making it somewhat easier to understand Lina’s actions. Anna, a servant girl who is raised along with Lina, is a great character who tells most of the story, and she makes Lina seem less selfish and more doomed by fate. One of the things that I didn’t really agree with was the idea that Anna thought that Lina wouldn’t have been so selfish if she had not been persecuted as a witch. I don’t think that had much of an effect on Lina since she spent her childhood in the southern country. The Heathcliff character (Damek) is more mysterious, and we don’t find out much about his thoughts or feelings, so I didn't have much sympathy for him at all. But I think the whole obsession/revenge story works better in a fantasy setting because it’s more believable than in real life.