A Winter’s Promise, by Christelle Dabos

Following the Rupture the world has been reduced to around two-dozen scattered arks, connected only by airship travel. Each ark has an immortal founder and has developed according to the personality of this spirit and the genetic talents of its people. Ophelia lives on the peaceful and egalitarian ark of Anima, ruled by a Matriarchy of Doyennes. She runs a museum and her talents include reading the history of objects and the ability to travel via mirror. Quiet, scruffy and clumsy, Ophelia is an unlikely candidate for a diplomatic marriage with a man from the remote and icy ark of Pole. We never do discover why the alliance is so vital that she must be forced into it or why the Doyennes sabotage her chances of success by providing no information or support. It can be difficult to criticise novels in translation because you don’t know if any problems with the story are from the original writing or are a fault in translation. This tale has been a bestseller in France, which is no guarantee of quality, but may tend to point to issues with the translation. There is a problem with some of the tenses, which may be technically correct but don’t read well in English, with excessive use of passive voice. The book plunges straight in to the plot with minimal exposition, which demonstrates refreshing respect for the intelligence of the audience. The quiet and unobtrusive heroine flies under the radar most of the time but nevertheless flies. Lesser characters tend to caricature and the baffling behaviour of Ophelia’s fiancé Thorn is not satisfactorily resolved. This is possibly because the novel is the first of a planned quartet and we will discover if he is hero or villain in later books.