Coveted Cover: Midwinterblood

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

I bought this pretty much the day after seeing Marcus Sedgwick talk about it at the Bath Children's Literature Festival this year, but I still haven't had a chance to read it because of my stack of review books and general life getting in the way.

I love the cover but at the same time find it strange, I don't really understand how it links in with the rest of the book. At first glance it makes me think of a Victorian Jack-the-Ripper-esque story but I know that this isn't the case with the book at all, in fact it's set in 2073 and was inspired by this old Swedish painting:

Midvinterblot (Midwinter Sacrifice) by Carl Larsson

Despite this confusion I still love the cover and I am sure that it will make more sense once I read the book. Marcus Sedgwick's book often have that effect, making no sense until you actually read them, and then they're always amazing.

I also just wanted to add that Carl Larsson is one of my favourite artists and I love that one of his paintings inspired a writer I enjoy reading so much.

From Goodreads:

Have you ever had the feeling that you've lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you've never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens. In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they've lost. In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon - the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter's moon, the blood moon - this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting.