Two years ago, the book club read a marvelous book from France called A Winter’s Promise which had 4.5 stars on GoodReads & Amazon. Many members adored it so much they immediately picked up book #2. However, the rest of the series hadn’t been translated yet. We’re thrilled to say that the final books are now available in English!
Winner of the 2021 Prix Albertine Jeunesse, Amazon’s Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy, a Publishers Weekly's Best Book of the Year, & an international indie bestseller…
Long ago, following a cataclysm called the Rupture, the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands, now known as arks. The inhabitants of these arks each possess a unique power.
Excerpt: “It's often said of old buildings that they have a soul. On Anima, the ark where objects come to life, old buildings tend mostly to become appallingly bad-tempered.
The Family Archives building, for example, was forever in a foul mood. It spent its days cracking, creaking, dripping, and puffing to express its disgruntlement. It didn’t like the drafts that made doors, left ajar, slam in the summer. It didn’t like the rains that clogged up its gutter in the autumn. It didn’t like the damp that seeped into its walls in winter. It didn’t like the weeds that returned to invade its courtyard every spring. But, above all, the Archives building didn’t like visitors who didn’t stick to the opening hours. And that’s doubtless why, in the early hours of that September morning, the building was cracking, creaking, dripping, and puffing even more than usual. It sensed someone arriving when it was still far too early to consult the archives. And that particular visitor didn’t even stand at the front door, on the steps, like a respectable visitor. No, that person entered the building like a thief, straight from the cloakroom.
A nose was sprouting, right in the middle of a mirrored wardrobe. The nose kept coming. Soon after, a pair of glasses emerged, then the arch of an eyebrow, a forehead, a mouth, a chin, cheeks, eyes, hair, and ears. Suspended there, above the shoulders, in the center of the mirror, the face looked to the right, then to the left. Next, a bit further down, a bended knee poked through, and in tow came a body that pulled itself right out of the mirrored wardrobe, as if from a bathtub. Once clear of the mirror, the figure amounted to nothing more than a worn-out old coat, a pair of gray-tinted glasses, and a long three-colored scarf. And under these thick layers, there was Ophelia.”
Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia possesses the trick to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima making her the perfect curator for a museum in the Archives. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan.
Ophelia must leave all she knows behind and follow Thorn to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, Ophelia slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.
Lose yourself in the fantastical world of the arks and in the company of memorable characters in this French runaway hit, Christelle Dabos’ The Mirror Visitor Quartet.
“The Mirror Visitor stands on the same shelf as Harry Potter.” —Elle Magazine
“Spectacular settings, exquisitely rendered characters.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Imagine the poisonous politics of Versailles in a glittering, steampunk world of quill pens, airships, masks, illusions, and murderous courtiers.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Ophelia is...the tiny-voiced powerhouse you can’t take your eyes off.” —The New York Times
“Dabos impresses with the power of her imagination. The architect of a bewitching and complex world, she sustains it with a subtle sense of wonder and elegant, flowing language. This is an addictively charming series.”―Télérama
“Rich with memorable inventions. Ophelia is the Alice of the 21st century.” ―Il borghese
“Your next obsession.” —Entertainment Weekly
