Black Spring

by Alison Croggon

Inspired by the gothic classic Wuthering Heights, this stunning fantasy from the author of the Books of Pellinor is a fiercely romantic tale of betrayal and vengeance.

In a savage land sustained by wizardry and ruled by vendetta, Lina is the enchanting but willful daughter of a village lord. She and her childhood companion, Damek, have grown up privileged and spoiled, and they’re devoted to each other to the point of obsession. But Lina’s violet eyes betray her for a witch, and witches are not tolerated in a brutally patriarchal society. Her rank protects her from persecution, but it cannot protect her from tragedy and heartbreak. An innocent visitor stands witness to the devastation that ensues as destructive longing unleashes Lina’s wrath, and with it her forbidden power. Whether drawn by the romantic, the magical, or the gothic, readers will be irresistibly compelled by the passion of this tragic tale.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Retellings, Gothic, Romance, Paranormal, Historical Fiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Alison Croggon is the award winning author of the acclaimed fantasy series The Books of Pellinor. You can sign up to her monthly newsletter and receive a free Pellinor story at alisoncroggon.com

Her most recent book is Fleshers, the first in a dazzling new SF series co-written with her husband, acclaimed playwright Daniel Keene. Her latest Pellinor book, The Bone Queen, was a 2016 Aurealis Awards Best Young Adult Book finalist. Other fantasy titles include Black Spring (shortlisted for the Young People's Writing Award in the 2014 NSW Premier's Literary Awards) and The River and the Book, winner of the Wilderness Society's prize for Environmental Writing for Children.

She is a prize-winning poet and theatre critic,, and has released seven collections of poems. As a critic she was named Geraldine Pascall Critic of the Year in 2009. She also writes opera libretti, and the opera she co-wrote with Iain Grandage was Vocal/Choral Work of the Year in the 2015 Art Music Awards. Her libretto for Mayakovsky, score by Michael Smetanin, was shortlisted in the Drama Prize for the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. She lives in Melbourne..

Reviews

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

well, it's about time. FINALLY a retelling of Wuthering Heights that

1) retains the integrity of the original material by being written in the same general tone, style and atmosphere of Wuthering Heights without the author's feeling it necessary to turn heathcliff into a rock star or some such nonsense.

2) does not pretend that catherine and heathcliff were likable people kept apart by circumstances. they weren't. they were both selfish assholes whose romance destroyed everything around them which is what separates their story from all those insipid Romeo and Juliet type tales. too many retellings want to turn them into martyrs, which is a complete misread.

3) adds new elements that are actually interesting and not just shoehorned in to make it not straight-up plagiarism. and you might look at this synopsis and wonder how wizards and magic could be gracefully incorporated into this story without coming across as laughable, but it works. and the book still manages to amplify the class and gender issues that exist in Wuthering Heights while incorporating all-new cultural differences and discomforts, and cleverly introducing the concept of the vendetta(!!!) as a nice little parallel to the parts of the original that are elided in this retelling.

but best of all, this book addresses and "fixes" some of the parts of Wuthering Heights that were … problematic, like how nelly could possibly have known half the things she was purporting to have known. thank god for diaries, am i right?? and catherine (lina, here) gets to have a few more scenes of powerful female indignation instead of just being a coddled whiner.

it is all-around great.

there have been some changes to the original. lina does not have a brother, and tibor (edgar) does not have a sister, so the circle of revenge and retribution is slightly adjusted. hindley's role is mostly covered by the more unambiguously-evil masko, so there is little sympathy for him once damek (heathcliff) eventually supplants him. anna (nelly) is made to be the same age as lina, so she has a larger role in this story, as a former childhood companion of lina who witnesses lina's transition from bossy and headstrong little girl to miserable victim to incredibly powerful force of nature. this is an improvement to the original, because her perspective has more weight than an older woman tut-tutting at a younger woman's blind willfulness, and she knows a lot more about lina's character than nelly ever understood about catherine's.

the story retains its original frame-tale structure, where a character named hammel, here, travels to the harsh climate and the remoteness of the north to escape the demands of the city, and gets more excitement and danger than he bargained for after encountering the inhospitable viciousness of damek and the ghostly visitation of lina, after which he returns to his rented house to learn the story of their catastrophic love from anna. all par for the course.

and, yes, this is YA, but it is not the instant-gratification pacing and action of many YA books. this is a densely-written and poetic retelling which captures the spirit of the original. while there are plenty of scenes that are violent and tragic, this is much more a character-driven novel, with rich backstory and world-building and a fantasy-laced, utterly dark, romance. remember, without an isabella, we also don't have a hareton, so that whole flowers-growing-out-of-the-ashes happy ending of the original is gone gone gone, and all we get are the ashes.

and that is a-ok by me.

come to my blog!

[Emily May · Rating 5 out of 5]

I made a little collage for this book that I posted to instagram:



And is it just me or would my college make the perfect setting for a beautiful and grim Wuthering Heights retelling?



karen's review does this book justice more than I think I ever could so I'll leave you with these few snazzy pictures and a short note: This has to be the PERFECT way to do a retelling. Especially for a book like Wuthering Heights, whose praises I have sung from the rooftops on a regular basis. It captures the wild beauty and grim darkness of the original novel, sticking quite close to the plot structure of WH but putting an insane fantasy spin on the old tale too. The characters were so evil and twisted but, if you know the real WH and not the romanticized version that appears on TV now and then, then you'll know how evil and twisted the characters actually are. *sigh* I loved it.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished this just after midnight on January 1st! My very first read of 2021!

And I’m not mad about it! I was promised updated Wuthering Heights, with a twist, and that is what I got. The author put this in Not!Scotland (or Yorkshire maybe but the coding was pretty fantasy highlands to me), prior to the Reformation, with a heaping helping of Sicilian mores on the side: particularly the vendetta. Then the cherry on top was the addition of magic to the tale- not the metaphorical kind the Brontes were fond of implying existed mystically between their lovers, but the literal here’s a wizard with a staff who can burn people up from the inside kind. I liked all these choices. The setting was effectively the same but an order of magnitude more brutal, appropriately for its high fantasy genre. The magic acted as a great metaphor for the terrifying social consequences people faced in Victorian England for not obeying social norms- one that readers of YA (which I guess this technically is?) would get without having to take a semester on the Enclosure Acts, urbanization trends and gender politics. The Sicilian stuff definitely had me sucking in a “ooooh boy, let’s see how this goes,” kind of breath when it was first introduced but I think it worked fine in the end. It gave the housekeeper a depth and more three dimensional backstory than she got in the original, and added to the menace of Lina’s story.

Speaking of which, Lina’s story was definitely the best part. Which makes sense since I think giving Cathy a more reasonable context for being the way she is seems to be the main purpose of this rewrite. Without giving away spoilers, Cathy’s abrupt changeability, particularly the decision to marry Linton and her brief happy moments with him, is given a far more sympathetic read, with a far better backstory than Emily ever gave it. Same with her refusal to deescalate the tension between the two men at the end, or to choose. She has a line about how no man wants her unless “he can jangle me in his pocket,” and the fact that she applies that equally to Heathcliff and Linton is the best moment in the book. I wish the author had chosen to update this story further to change the ending and see what she would have done about that if she had had the chance. I picture her as the fierce headmistress of a women’s college who would NOT like to admit men into the building, thank you. Like that lady on the last season of Endeavour- who you thought would turn out to be a baddie... but no, turns out she’s just a fierce one who has clearly been hurt enough by men to need to literally put a fence between herself and them for most of her life. The wizard scene near the end was satisfying for that reason. I won’t spoil it, but if you’ve read it you know what I mean.

It may not be surprising to hear then that where this was relatively lacking was the men. Croggan did not seem especially interested in updating Heathcliff’s side of things, or giving his story the same level of depth or complexity. He was just... Heathcliff. I didn’t get any more out of him than I usually do. Linton got a bit of something- certainly described with more respect than Emily did. But not enough to get beyond pity for him. I thought the narrator update was interesting- the letter at the end especially was very District Commissioner among the barbarians at the end of Things Fall Apart, seeing nothing but a story in the destruction of these lives. That was nice. Most interesting of the men- but of course due to the structure of the story we barely see him. The stuff with the king & the blood tax was a bit on the nose, the vendetta stuff, while helpful to the mood, wasn’t as necessary to the plot and took away from character work time in my opinion (maybe a function of being YA and needing some more action?), and the stand in for Hindley is a cartoon villain. I just think the men deserved better characterization, as a whole.

But I still quite liked this, despite these missed opportunities. If you want something atmospherically grey, covered in mist, if you’re down for a bit of Victorian magic, or if you ever walked away wanting more either from Cathy or for Cathy on your Wuthering Heights read... this one’s for you.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I know of a new way of messing up a retelling - an author can create a retelling of a story so close to the original, that it becomes just a poor copy of it. (I think I even want to throw “plagiarism!” somewhere here.)

At first, I thought I would love “Black Spring.” Although from the very beginning the atmosphere in Croggon’s retelling of “Wuthering Heights” was very similar to the original, the writing was so spectacular, I felt that the author’s additions of magic and vendetta to Emily Bronte’s story would help her create a familiar, but at the same new version of the beloved classic . Alas, as "Black Spring" progressed, the Croggon’s inventions were quickly abandoned to rehash and copy “Wuthering Height”’s plot and characterization, to the point that I started to think – It’s the same exact story! It has exactly the same mood! I might as well be rereading “Wuthering Heights”!

I wish Croggon used Bronte’s setting and her own beautiful way with words and developed a completely new plot, leaving poor Cathy and Heathcliff alone. These two were much more passionate and mysterious in Bronte’s version.

[Nafiza · Rating 5 out of 5]

OH. MY. God. Finding out that Ms. Croggon's writing another book nearly made me weep. It's going to be awesome, I'm telling you right now.

This was brilliant. I loved it.

[Christina (A Reader of Fictions)]

Pages Read: 26

Reason for DNFing:
When I hear about retellings, I'm interested, whether for a book I loved or no. I actually really enjoyed Wuthering Heights, and thought Wuthering Heights + paranormal could be seriously amazing.

Here's the thing: I don't mean retelling literally. I don't want the book to read like it has literally been rewritten, like a lazy student might copy a paper but change every sentence's verbiage to not get caught plagiarizing. The story is, so far as I can tell from the brief portion I read (almost 10%) and from the reviews I looked through, precisely the same as the one in Wuthering Heights, only with some added nonsense about witches and wizards. Why?

She even keeps the frame story, which is by far the worst aspect of Wuthering Heights in my opinion, since it really doesn't add much, and that guy, in both versions, is an exceedingly pompous, boring windbag.

Here, for example, is the first two sentences of the novel:
"After the long winter, I needed to get as far away from the city as I possibly could. My life there filled me with a weariness of disgust; I was tired of endless conversations in lamp-lit cafes with overeducated aesthetes like myself, tired of my apartment with its self-consciously tasteful artworks and its succession of witty visitors, of the endless jostling for status among the petty literati, the sniping envy and malicious gossip."

I've just gone to reread the first few pages of Wuthering Heights, and, though that guy's annoying, he's nowhere near as pretentious as this loser. In comparison, Croggon's writing feels stilted and like it's trying too hard to emulate old-fashioned writing, as most modern attempts at using the diction and syntax of antiquated styles do.

Though I did not make it to the POV switch to Lina, the Catherine character, I really do not care. I already loathe the writing, and, if I want to read the plot of Wuthering Heights, I'll just go get it off my bookshelf and enjoy Bronte's version. If I want a retelling, I expect the author to bring their own unique flair to the table, their own style and a new vision of the characters that adds depth. Simply rehashing what the original author did is absurd, because how are you going to measure up to Emily Bronte? If that's what you want to do, find a terrible, little-known book with a good concept and rewrite that.

[Stuti Rai · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If I am wrong," she said at last in a low voice," there is no right, either."

I love Wuthering Heights. I love Black Springs. I love moors and magic, and while I will always be a peninsula girl, I find it not in myself to reproach plateaus. I love the world, there is so much love, I am radiating it.

After a mediocre end to 2013, flax start in 2014, I have found my stride. Two fantastic, superb, will-give-my-one-pair-of-glasses-for-a-reread exciting books; books that I wasn't too sure about. How great is that? Great enough to turn me into sunshines and red slippers kind of person. Whatever that means. I'm looking at you and I'm radiating my love, like that girl from Ask the Passengers.

As a retelling, it's obvious and it maintains the integrity of the original. Lina and Damek, the retold Cathy and Heathcliff, aren't romanticized, they remain the charming and cruel persons of WH. On its own, though, excepting the sequence of the story- the major moments, the beginning and the end- it's different, unique.

For one, the story spreads out far beyond the two manors; it encompasses the village, the village crones and their superstitions, nobility and their cruelty, magic tribes, vendetta et cetra, et cetra, et cetra. All these elements of the story aren't simply decorations; they work with the characters and the tale. Except, I think, because of this, there was a loss in the feel of the place- the atmosphere of the plateau. For a moment here and there, Anna professes her love for the place, and describes what she sees, but it was not adequate enough for me.

Lina was born with violet eyes, the daughter of a witch and a lord in disgrace in an oppressive land where female witches are left to wither and die at birth. Damek is brought introduced in a different manner from Heathcliff- not a child off the streets, but as a charge to the lord from the King, whose mysterious beginning are the subject of gossip.

Moreover, it's more Lina's story, I think, than Damek's whereas, IMO, WH leaned more towards Heathcliff. She's more of a charismatic person, more feeling; of course, she's cruel and selfish but she makes you feel for her selfishness. I, for one, was completely fallen for her. Because, damn, she's powerful and she ain't afraid to set you right if you believe otherwise.

Black Springs incorporates gender and class issues freely, and considering Anna(Nelly part deux) was a young woman who had grown up with Lina as a sister, her perspective as the narrator isn't as skewed and old-fashioned, but more passionate. And would you believe it, she admits to not knowing somethings! Take that, Nelly! More importantly, Anna presents a more favorable light in which to view Lina; she redeems Lina in small ways, if I may.

...and there was not one person she knew, including myself, who had not attempted to shape her wild being into a more biddable form. She was like a thorn to which misfortune is bent into an espalier against a wall and which cannot but betray its spiky and unruly nature, no matter how sternly its growth is pruned and directed...Lina's only real crime was to be born a woman, with powers and instincts that were thought to be proper to belong only to a man.

And, of course, my likeness for Anna trumps my annoyance at her at:

I had always felt for Lina the compassion and love of a sister; now I felt the loyalty and indignation of our common sex.

I am too easy, I know.

So this was a story of a savage land, story of a willful girl, story of a village where vendetta crawls in and leeches away and more, story of Anna; quite a lot. But WH was about revenge and passion. I think it's the former in which the scarcity is astute. All this, everything and more, it takes too much of the tale, plus the lack of a Hareton and Edgar's sister, the revenge gives way to suffering and magic. Which by no means is a bad addition, but the improvisations and means to exact retribution were flax, methinks. If not flax, then the emotion behind it didn't come across well enough for me, a bit hurried. I should also make clear that I'm talking about Lina's family side of things- her husband, daughter etc. I wish it weren't so rushed through. Because here, the story ends with Damek and Lina, together, not the legacy of destruction and retribution they leave behind. After Lina's death, it appears the story is hastening madly towards Damek's death, to be done with itself.

Another caveat was the presence, actually more like absence, of Kush, the Joseph we know and hate: he appears for a page or two and disappears ENTIRELY from the story until two sentences at the end. That was slightly embarrassing.

General impression, though: by my quasi-hatred of mac & cheese, I swear I LOVE this book. So MUCH YES YES YESSSING involved on my part. I was fairly ambivalent for a while but Oh, mama mia, mama mia! Magnifico!

Platitudes of gratitude to Candlewick Press!!!

[Wandering Librarians · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lina is the daughter of a village lord. She has grown up with her companion, Damek, and they are inseparable, devoted to each other in a way no one understands. Lina is a witch, and although wizards are revered and respected, withes are put to death. Only Lina's status as a lord's daughter protects her. But Lina's life is filled with tragedy, and long after he death, a stranger to the village uncovers the whole sad story.

It was Wuthering Heights. And there really isn't much more to say. In Alison Croggon's author blurb it says, "This book is my love letter to Emily Bronte, whom I've adored since I was a child." So her love letter was rewriting Emily Bronte's book. Plus wizards.

I did not like the original Wuthering Heights. I am not a fan of Gothic romances, and had no patience for a book full of unpleasant people making their lives, and everyone else's, unpleasant. They all came to a tragic end, and it's your own damn fault! Ugh. Couldn't stand it. So knowing this was a retelling of Wuthering Heights, I was skeptical going in, but it might be good, you know, if the author decides to do something with it.

But Croggon did not do anything with it. She just rewrote it. Exactly as it was. Only with a slight magic aspect. A magic aspect, I might add, that added absolutely nothing. What was the point of Lina being a witch, or there being wizards that wanted to kill her? Nothing came of it. It was just the Wuthering Heights story retold, with nothing original added.

So that was disappointing, and also made me wonder, could I do this? Can I take a book in the public domain, essentially rewrite it, as it is, maybe throw a slight fantastical element in, and get it published? Why aren't I doing that?

Black Spring comes out August 27, 2013.

[Ferdy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars - Spoilers

-Wuthering Heights with less enthralling characters, less passion, and more of a YA vibe. Also, a wizard or two.

-The writing was dry and dull, especially all of Hammel's parts.

-There were too many boring info dumps.

-I wasn't a fan of most of the characters - Lina (Cathy) was more or less decent enough, but Damek (Heathcliffe) was awful. I didn't believe in the love or obsession between Damek/Lina at all - Lina did seem to genuinely love Damek, but I didn't buy Damek's feelings for Lina. And then there was Anna (Lina's maid) and Hammel, who were both rather boring narrators.

-The worldbuilding was a bit of a mess… there were too many silly rules and nonsensical laws.

-It was odd that in a fictional fantasy world Christianity was the main religion — it didn't fit with the rest of the made up history, laws, places, names, and people. It was just weird to have a religion from the real world be the main religion in a fantasy world. The other fantasy books I've read have all had made up religions, so yea, that's what I expect from fantasy books.

-The vendetta/blood law was unbelievably ridiculous. When a person was killed, the killer then had to be killed by said person's closest male relative. That was fine. But then it got dumb… the relative who killed the killer then had to be killed by the killer's closest male relative, and then that led to the killer's closest male relative having to be killed by the other guy's closest relative… And it went on and on until most of the men were killed. It was beyond stupid.

-Why did the people in the North despise witches so much? Wizards were okay but witches weren't? What was the reasoning behind witches being killed at birth? Was it just because they were women? And women couldn't have power?

-Lina was the only character with real personality, she was haughty, spoilt, and attention-seeking… Which I actually liked but what I wasn't impressed with was her idiocy. She kept pushing and angering the people who had power over her, and then when she'd get punished she'd have a hissy fit… Why didn't she have the sense to act meek and biddable? At least then she would have been safe.

-Damek was an idiot, he was so lame compared to Heathcliffe. Was I meant to believe he loved Lina? He left her for five years with no power, no friends, no family, and with a man who'd just raped her. If he really loved her, he would have returned to her sooner or taken her with him.
At least in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliffe knew Cathy was safe with her brother, Nelly and her Household. Whereas Lina had nobody — her whole village hated her and wanted her dead because she was a witch, she had no power or property, her guardian raped her, and her only friend was sent away. He left her all on her own, he didn't write to her, or send her money… She had NOTHING. He knew that but he didn't give a fuck.
And then he swanned back into her life when she'd just gotten married — where was he before that? Why did he bother to come back? Why did he act so betrayed when he was the one that left for years? How could he love her as much as he claimed if he did nothing when she was at her most vulnerable? And then he had the audacity to bitch and moan about how hard his life was when he was away from her. Why didn't he come back sooner then? Why didn't he write to her? He was probably having a great time without her, I bet he was whoring around, drinking and living it large. The only reason he turned up again was because he must have heard about Lina's marriage, and was pissed that she moved on. Ugh, I didn't believe in Damek's love for Lina at all.
Oh and him marrying Lina's daughter, then sexing her up and treating her like rubbish didn't convince me of his supposed strong feelings for Lina.

All in all, I wasn't impressed… Lina was the only interesting character, the worldbuilding was weird, and the romance (on Damek's part) wasn't believable.

[Karen Witzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good YA-ish shorter retelling of Wuthering Heights with a little witchcraft fantasy and a lot of Albanian vendetta.

The childhood of Lina and Damek in the first half (as told by Anna) is as good an homage to Emily Bronte as you will ever read.

I am now willing to read more by this author and must read Broken April by Ismail Kadare.

[Liviania · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was sold on BLACK SPRING quite quickly. Emily Brontë's WUTHERING HEIGHTS updated with magic and Albanian vendetta culture, done by an acclaimed fantasy author? I'm not the biggest fan of WURTHERING HEIGHTS, but I can see how a blood feud and a bit of wizardry would punch it up.

Unfortunately, BLACK SPRING hews extremely close to its inspiration. The frame story is the same, only providing a bit of interest when visitor Hammel completely disregards maid Anna's tale at the end. Alison Croggon's best addition is adding a more obvious feminist text, as witch Lina struggles with the men in her life seeking to possess her or end her. Unfortunately, it's hard to side with her declaration of proud independence when she's ignoring someone trying to get her to come along lest she be killed.

As for the vendetta element, it is completely useless. (And why use the Italian word instead of the Albanian one, when this is clearly an Albanian influence?) As they are related to royalty, Lina (Catherine) and Damek (Heathcliff) cannot be directly touched by the vendetta. And while it comes to the town, I'm not sure when the blood feud ended, or if it ever did, which is just sloppy. The narrator Anna is affected, but since her focus is on Lina and Damek's story, she doesn't get to go into much depth about her loss.

The existence of witches and wizards isn't used much better. It highlights tension between male and female power in the country, but it is ultimately unimportant compared to hitting the beats of WURTHERING HEIGHTS exactly. It's a shame, because Croggon is a wonderful writer and the bit of her world she builds is fascinating. I'd love to see a story about this country, kept under control by the king's wizards negotiating the many blood feuds, that isn't devoted to retelling a story that has little to do with politics or magic.

I think I might be kinder to BLACK SPRING if I had never read Diana Peterfreund's FOR DARKNESS SHOWS THE STARS. Now that is how you marry a classic to a totally different genre. Croggon is a talented writer, so it isn't an unpleasant reading experience, but it's one that follows the original to slavishly. BLACK SPRING doesn't truly transform WURTHERING HEIGHTS, just offers a few stage trappings attempting to mask the moors of Brontë.

[Temperance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

It's been several years since I last read Wuthering Heights (I read it during my junior year of high school and fell in love). When Black Spring popped up on my dashboard, promising an intriguing tale influenced by a novel I love dearly, I was cautiously optimistic. I haven't had the best luck with retellings of my favorite classics (Anna K.: A Love Story being my most recent failure). But with the quarantine, I thought: why not?

I'm glad I took the plunge.

Well...mostly.

This is definitely a Wuthering Heights retelling; readers will recognize the setting, the characters, and the scenes. But it is a skillful one; Alison Croggon has breathed new life into something familiar and for that, I commend her. She's created a new, savage world where magic, religion, and the unforgiving vendetta rule. I found the connections between Anna, Lina, and Damek intriguing and the setting made me feel much as those windswept moors did all those years ago. And the plot...the plot was as Gothic, bleak, and wonderful as its predecessor.

I also liked the changes Croggon made, adding a new depth that wasn't present in the original.

Like Wuthering Heights, Black Spring has broken my heart, in the best way possible. Needless to say, I'm going to need some time to recover. Or, at least, a slightly more cheerful book.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book scared me so deeply I put the book downwards so I couldn't see the face of the witch on the cover. I don't know if I can look at the front cover again- this book, whilst I was reading it, was far from scary and also, amazingly good with the simple, yet unique style of writing, yet the after taste of it is curious, and I am left in a confused state of what I just read. The story, for one, is so passionate and the love and death that bined together was so gothic and nourishing. The ending is, quite differently from other books, I am afraid to say, sad, and the amount of deaths in this book was like eating each cracker casually. I loved how understanding the writer- in the books was and how she put her very own opinions in her writing, that were both so wise and made me feel different about how I thought completely.
I am stunned and impressed by this book- it was such a realistic tale and I believed all the magic that came in- the happenings after the tragic part in the book made me want to squeal with suspence, or excitement.
This book is truly a favourite of mine.

[Madeleine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, so the fundamental question in adaptation is what you're really doing here, and this one never answers the basic one; is this an adaptation of Wuthering Heights with the addition of magical beings or is this a fantasy story borrowing from and inspired by Wuthering Heights?

And as I said, that doesn't really get answered, because it's both, and because it doesn't gel to one of those cohesive frames, it makes all the Wuthering Heights stuff sound stupid or the magical stuff sounds like a divergence from the story you're here for.

This one, frankly, did not need the Lockwood, because Hareton and Hindley do not exist, and there was no reason to have (Anna) Nelly tell part of the story is there was going to be a section where Lina (Cathy) jumps in on the narration. This one, of all the ones, could have cut the framing device of Lockwood or even the next generation breaking the cycle (which doesn't happen).

Which is why this is a clumsy adaptation, every break from Bronte canon carves out pages within the structure of Wuthering Heights for exposition about the world in which Wuthering Heights needed no exposition. So supplanted between the reimagining of scenes you feel comfortable in and then it flushes in information that frankly seems like it belongs in another book.

Wuthering Heights has weird, trippy, mystical shit, but it's part of the natural world, not a rigid societal structures. And that could be an interesting way to flip it on its head, that the rigid Victorian societal structures were the way to class-assign the witches, but that also goes no where. Lina (Cathy) is a witch, but it's not really handled creatively, WH had curses and damnation without needing spells, it all feels unnaturally attached, nothing weaves in easily, and it loses the potential it could have had by sticking too close and then launching itself too far away from the source material.

So this is an overwhelming structural error, but now I need to talk about my precious Wuthering Heights (Tw: rape and child abuse):

If you take the child abuse out of Wuthering Heights, it is not Wuthering Heights.

This could be said of all adaptations, but it's important here. There is no Hindley, there is no barbed relationship with Mr. Earnshaw, there is no toxic sibling dynamic before he dies. Lina (Cathy) is just a violent brat because she's a witch, Damek (Heathcliff) is just quiet and tolerant until he isn't anymore. Hindley is replaced with the distant male heir of the heights, which is meaningless because he has no quarrel with the other children like Hindley did, and he beats them as Joseph and Hindley did but at a much later age, so it is a very different dynamic and the bond between the two isn't forged as children.

Then that guardian rapes Lina (Cathy).

And Heathcliff just leaves Cathy. After her rape. Instead of doing, you know, what Heathcliff would probably do and set the entire house on fire and drag Cathy out by her ankles so they could run away together.

That's the thing about Wuthering Heights, it's about unfit authority figures, normalized violence, and cycles of abuse. Beating your children, as Cathy and Heathcliff were beaten, was not the most horrific thing you could do at the times this book was written, it was standard discipline, but the reasons for and severity the beatings is where these authority figures were at fault (at the time). None of the adults in Wuthering Heights were empathetic enough to gentle their hands towards the children they were hurting, but they weren't doing anything illegal, technically. They failed as parents on an emotional level; but on a societal one, they weren't reinventing the wheel when it came to corporal punishment. Hindley then became the authority figure and the beatings became out of control because he was unfit to run a household because of the way this household was run when he was a child in it, etc.

It is very important that there was no rape in Wuthering Heights.

Okay, well, done to Cathy, and this is an Isabella-less WH.

Heathcliff left Cathy with her brother, in her childhood home, with Nelly, where she was acting like she was too good to be with him. He knew she'd be fine.

Damek leaves Lina alone with her rapist in a home she has no legal claim to anymore. His revenge no longer matters because the amount of danger he leaves her in is inhumane, and everything he is angry at her for when he gets back no longer matters because even if he loves her he didn't try to protect her from her rapist.

Damek sucks, and that's after comparing him to fucking Heathcliff.

After her death, instead of marrying her daughter to his heir, he marries Lina Jr. himself, so Lina Jr. takes on the role of Isabella and Cathy Jr., so he gets revenge on his raped childhood friend who he abandons with her rapist who dies in childbirth by kidnapping, raping and abusing her daughter.

Heathcliff's revenge was rarely about physical violence, it was about control. He didn't want to beat Hindley for beating him, he wanted to ruin Hindley's life from the inside. He wanted to take something Edgar loved, so he took his sister. He wanted Cathy to suffer, so he enacted this conspiracy to lure Cathy Jr. back to the heights and have her marry his son because when you are as abused as Heathcliff, people are toys, and that's just how he feels like he has control.

And what's most important is that he fails, tremendously, at breaking Hareton and Cathy Jr. and they break the cycle of abuse that had broken him and Cathy.

Damek marries Cathy Jr. himself, which removes the distance from the OG character's control of the situation, and enacts the abuse on her that Lina received that Lina was not fucking complicit in. There is not Hareton. There is not righting the wrongs of the past generation.

Heathcliff sounds like fucking prince charming after this book.

[julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hier habe ich etwas anderes erwartet: die Fantasy-Aspekte, die das Buch vom Ausgangswerk "Sturmhöhe" abheben sollten, waren sehr spärlich vertreten und spielten im Grunde keine Rolle für die Geschichte. Die Schilderungen der Kindheit im Mittelteil fand ich zu lang und trocken, während das Ende mit den Toden wichtiger Personen viel zu kurz und emotionslos ausfiel. Die Rahmenhandlung mit dem Pächter hätte man auch ganz weglassen können, weil es nichts zur Story beitrug.

[Mizuki]

DNF-ed, I got rid of the book last year. I don't mean to say it's a bad book, but it just doesn't get me. LOL

[Cari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Spring managed to do something that I thought would have been impossible... It managed to retell the story of Bronte's Wuthering Heights in a way that was unique and strong enough to stand on it's own.

I loved the atmosphere of this novel, as it was dark and brooding and teeming with magic and curses. The world created in Black Spring is the home of wizards (who were feared and contemptuously respected) and witches (who were cast out and often murdered). There are vendettas that steal the lives of every male in a bloodline, spanning decades like a plague, and enforced by dark wizards. This world was spellbinding and seemed to be a very fitting setting for a tragic love story.

To be quite honest, it's been probably a good fifteen years since I last read Wuthering Heights and although I absolutely loved it, I don't remember specific details of Heathcliff and Catherine's doomed love. Thus, I can't really do a good specific comparison/contrast of these two books and to be honest, I wouldn't want to even if I did have a more detailed memory of it. Although Black Spring is even more tragic and violent than I remember Wuthering Heights as being, Lina and Damek's story did not stand in the shadows of the original gothic tale. Like I said before, it really does hold its own, simply because the world-building and story-telling is so on-point. It's really just Lina and Damek's "cursed" relationship that is paralell to the original tale, and it is just about as haunting in this retelling.

Fans of Wuthering Heights and/or the fantasy genre should totally check this out. Warning: Although it is magical, this is no fairytale.
☆☆☆☆

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knowing this was a tribute to Wuthering Heights going in, I knew it was going to be dark, depressing, and tragic. And it was. It's not the type of book I usually enjoy, but I love Croggon's writing so I picked it up even knowing it was going to be nothing like her Pellinor series. And it wasn't.

Croggon succeeded at writing a beautifully dark tale of a young couple trapped in a harsh society with no place for either them, doomed by their passionate and rebellious natures. The setting is a historical fantasy version of the Northern Moors, where magicians enforce vendettas for generations, witches are killed on sight, and curses are an immediate danger. Lives are lived and lost with a sense of the completely unchangeable nature of this world, embedded in the land itself. It's haunting and tragic.

One negative - I was confused at first because the story starts out with a bored, rich man from the South deciding to get away from society by visiting the North, but it turns out that the story is not about him at all. His is just a wrapper for the real tale that he hears while he is there. I felt like the 'story within a story' aspect was not really needed, except for setting the mood.

I can't say I loved it or even really liked it, since I usually don't enjoy books that are so depressing and hopeless all the way through. However, I do feel that I can give it 3 stars because I did enjoy the atmospheric writing and can recognize a good Gothic tale when I read one, and because it is refreshing to read outside of my comfort zone sometimes.

**Received free arc for review.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘After the last long winter, I needed to get as far away from the city as I possibly could.’

This young adult novel was inspired by ‘Wuthering Heights’, so I approached it with great caution. On the one hand, I wanted to see how Ms Croggon’s story would develop. On the other hand, ‘Wuthering Heights’ is my favourite novel, and I am deeply wary of other authors encroaching on any of its territory.

I was pleasantly surprised. On both counts. While I could recognise aspects of ‘Wuthering Heights’ in the structure of the story, and in similarity of characters and in echoes of language throughout the novel, ‘Black Spring’ has its own tale of betrayal and vengeance. Magic, rather than family, defines the world. The land that Lina and Damek inhabit is a bleak land, full of superstition, suspicion and watchfulness, ruled by wizards and the harsh, strict rules of vendetta. The narrators are Anna (Lina’s maid) and Hammel (a traveller to the magical north).

‘Vendetta is a black vine, a parasite that fruits only graves.’

Lina has the violet eyes that mark her as a witch, she is only protected from persecution by her rank. But her position is no defence against tragedy, can provide her no security against heartbreak. A tragic heroine, with some similarities to Cathy Earnshaw. And Damek? He is no Heathcliff. And yet, he is like Heathcliff in some ways.

I found that I enjoyed reading this novel better if I didn’t compare it to ‘Wuthering Heights’. The story has its own gothic, romantic, tragic trajectory.

‘I shall never complain of the tedium of the city again.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Sajid Rabby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book! I was really in the mood for reading gothic books after finishing Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares, so I picked this one up!

First I had my doubts on whether I would like a re-telling of Wuthering Heights but any doubt faded away soon after starting this book. I loved the way it was written especially the way the eerie atmosphere was portrayed. Loved the narrative structure of the book and the more I read, the more I was drawn to the gothic atmosphere, the dark story and to the wicked characters...

I'm just really surprised that this book is not more popular...

p.s: Thanks a lot to Karen for recommending this book to me! I don't think I would've even heard about this book otherwise....!

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars
In order to appreciate the beauty of this story, one has to appreciate Wuthering Heights. Alison Croggon does a brilliant job of using language that is eerily evocative of the original. But this is not just a retelling with different names, the land that she creates is amazing and magical. This is truly one of the best books of 2013. This book was sheer genius, but it takes a true appreciation of a novel that is not plot driven. It had its moments of intensity, but the strength of the novel lies with the character and the exploration of relationships.

My only quibble....
The beauty of WH lies in the message of redemption as seen in the true love that grows at the end of the novel. This book has no such message rather focusing on the twisted love of Lina and Damek and their suffering.

[Cass]

That synopsis seems way too telling. But anyway, imagine you're just doing your usual thing, walking around and peeking at what people around you are reading, as you do. And... BAM! This chick with the haunted expression, with the caged-in windswept hair and thick eye makeup is staring back at you! You take a mental note of the title and now you're here. Except this is not the story of how you got here, because this book isn't yet released.

Ahem. If you just read this I'm sorry for wasting your time. I just like to ramble on about books when I have something to say about them. Even if I haven't yet read them, or even the book they're inspired by. I will say though, I'm not 100% sure if the cover sells it as a YA novel. Still, this book sounds intriguing!

[Madly Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

REREADING 2024-25

Okay, here's my thoughts on Black Spring:

First as a retelling of Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is a metaphysical novel, what some call Visionary Fiction. Yes, it's Gothic and from the latter English Romantic Period, but it's the sort of novel that people read and think about in terms of exactly what it is and what it is about. Part love story, part fairy tale, part revenge tale, it's the kind of novel that one can never quite place in the natural scheme of literary things. It just doesn't fit. How Emily Bronte wrote it is still a mystery to me. I've always wanted to write a retelling, but never been brave enough and after reading Black Spring, I am even more fearful. Laughing.

Black Spring is clearly the author's love letter to Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights. In fact, the author states this. But even without that statement, I can see it. Like others, I've always considered Wuthering Heights a sort of tribute to Milton's Paradise Lost. If you have never read that, it's hard to fully grasp Bronte's story.

The idea is that the lovers fall from Hell into Heaven. (Maybe we all do) Talk about subverting Milton's trope! And it's so feminist. Well, I don't want to go on and on about that, but in Black Spring, we have the true Catherine character in the outcast and exiled Lina, who is a witch, doomed to be feared and under a death threat her entire life. As she develops into a woman, the changes she feels are like those of the characters in Wuthering Heights, for she is falling from Hell to a Heaven when she meets Damek. Together they kind of make a whole, both cruel and wild, aligned with nature. They don't belong anywhere, but to each other. Talk about a love story that is more than a love story.

Why does Lina (and Catherine) forsake their true lovers and move toward a direction of pure tragedy that can only be obliterated by their deaths??????

Well, that is the ultimate question. And Black Spring does it so well, by making sure that Lina, like Catherine, is searching for a way out of her patriarchal world. Of course, it doesn't really work.

Both Damek and Heathcliff (mirrors of Lina and Catherine) want to possess their lovers completely. The two ladies really have no choices. Lina will always be a witch. She will never be the normal, docile wife that her husband wants, she will never love anything or anyone but her mirror self. She and Damek are both imprisoned in their roles. And this imprisonment leads to madness.

In Wuthering Heights, Catherine starved herself; in Black Spring, Lina refused to heal from childbirth and accept her new role as wife and mother.

Of course Damek is not whole without his other half, and so he self destructs. All this is done so well in a new story.

Black Spring as a Fantasy Novel

SPOILERS!!!!! But it really doesn't spoil, because you have to read it to appreciate it.

Although I love all the parallels to Wuthering Heights, I absolutely loved this Gothic gem about a place ruled by a law called The Vendetta, a curse so powerful it gave me the chills when I thought about what it really meant.

Croggen invented a whole new mythology, one that I have never seen in previous YA novels. I made a note in the book that this vendetta was worse than anything Shirley Jackson wrote in her stories!

It's about a law that exists in the North lands, where if one man of a family is killed by a man from another family (all noble people are exempt), the nearest relative of the dead man must kill the murderer, and then the opposite and nearest family member must exact revenge against the latter, and the revenge goes on and on forever, until all family members of both families are dead. (Sometimes there is a truce formed by the Wizards of the North). (Note: Women don't matter! They are only property and mothers and servants.)

It's ghastly. The money these people must pay in a Blood Tax for each single death is given to the King, sometimes, all possessions, houses, and lands are used. Therefore, the entire landscape of the North is dotted with tombstones and graveyards. A single Vendetta can go on for years and years, even a century!

This was pretty brilliant in my opinion. There are metaphysical and social questions about such a system, placed upon the ordinary people by their King and nobility. It's a system built on extreme HONOR but at what price? I was completely fascinated by this whole system and it sparked a lot of creative thinking for me as a reader and writer.

The writing is awesome if sometimes difficult. The author paid a special tribute to Bronte by incorporating language of Bronte and even mimicking the power and themes of the Gondal poems, which are the basis for Wuthering Heights. But I loved all that. There are some powerful passages. I ended up marking the entire book. Laughing.

Finally....

One particular passage was so haunting. It is when the opening narrator is riding through the landscape of the North and he looks out his carriage and sees a lone young man walking down the road, a young man who escaped The Vendetta by living only in the open at night and making his home in the day in what the author called an odu. This young corpse of a man was fated never to see sunlight again, almost like a vampire. It was utterly creepy and I don't think I will ever forget that image and am bound to use some form of it in my own writing later on. It was only two paragraphs, but so powerful.

And I found myself thinking of its connection to Wuthering Heights in other ways and I am not even sure the author intended that. Those are my own secret thoughts. I am still thinking about it.

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

*** also published at The Next Read ***

I’m not a big one for re-tellings of the classics. Mostly, they seem to run the range between cliché and blatant plagiarism with a rare few stand-outs. Wuthering Heights, in all its Gothic splendour, happens to be one of my favourite classics, so it was with a great deal of apprehension that I started Alison Croggon’s fantasy twist on this tale – and it wasn’t exactly a brilliant beginning. The format of this YA title is pretty much exactly the same as the original. Our narrator is the same arrogant, snobbish and frustrating figure, who then falls ill and is entertained by the maid and her shocking tale of the neighbours’ murky past. Sound familiar? The setting is apparently the same as the original, both in time and place, except for one thing: in this world, we have wizards and witches. And our Cathy figure, named Lina? Yeah, she’s a witch. And related to the royal family, and therefore rather fittingly a royal pain in the ass.

Basic storyline remains: Imperious, wilful Cathy’s life on the moors changes when her father brings home a gypsy boy (except, in this, Heathcliff is named Damek and is the bastard son of the king) for her to play with. Cue the beginning of an epic, intense and disturbingly co-dependent relationship in which both parties make it their mission to make each other’s lives – and those of everyone around them – utterly miserable. You know the story: Heathcliff/Damek leaves, Cathy/Lina marries the wrong guy, everyone is desperately unhappy and vicious with it, Lina dies and the cycle begins again with her daughter. For the sake of clarity (I assume) Croggon has eliminated a bunch of characters and simplified many others.

But this is where things get a little different. Croggon’s society is basically run by wizards and the weird and somewhat undefined relationship they have with the crown. They hate Lina, for reasons that are only vaguely sketched out as having something to do with her father’s choice of wife, thus Lina and her family don’t move to the north until she’s roughly ten. And the north is a land of strange, superstitious folk, with curious ways – such as the complicated law of vendetta. To summarise: basically, someone is murdered, and by law their murderer must be killed by a member of the victim’s family. This avenging figure is then taken out by one of their victim’s (the original murderer’s) family members, and so on and so forth until everyone is dead or grieving. The murderers also have to pay a Blood Tax for the privilege of killing and being killed, so everyone is actually dead, grieving or broke.

There are a whole bunch more complicated details to this bizarre rule – ones that, perhaps, if they had a whole novel devoted to them, could become an interesting premise that actually makes sense. As it is, this story reads like two tales crammed unsuccessfully into one: the demented love story of two damaged individuals; and a dark fantasy tale about a superstitious and strange community. It sticks too closely to the storyline of Wuthering Heights to be original, and the magical elements it seeks to add are just not well developed enough to bring anything new to the story. Lina’s powers are never fully explored and neither are the boundaries of magic in general. Somewhat impressively, Croggon has managed to indulge in several info-dumping passages (in part acceptable due to Anna’s narration, but still annoying) as well as failing to fully explain and develop the world she has created.

That’s the bad. Now for the good.

The relationships are pitch-perfect, and the ‘maid’ figure, known as Anna, has far more personality and air-time in this story than in Emily Bronte’s version. She also has nearly enough good qualities to redeem the rest of the morally bankrupt cast. I know, I know – they are meant to be terrible. I’m perfectly OK with that. If anything, Croggon’s Lina is stronger, smarter and blessed with a kinder soul than Bronte’s Cathy. Sure, she’s likely to throw a tantrum if she doesn’t get her way and her maternal instincts are dubious at best, but she also has a strong sense of her own worth and a fundamentally loving heart. For all the weaknesses in the plot, Croggon certainly captured the essence of the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff – sorry, Lina and Damek – in all its twisted glory. It does, however, lack the absolutely gut-wrenching impact of the original.

The problem with this isn’t that it is bad – it just isn’t good, either. Like the original, it is seductive, dark and slightly addictive. If you manage to get into this story, and do your best to forget the Wuthering Heights connection, it is a decent – if slightly weird and incomprehensible – Gothic fantasy with great characters. However, if you’re like me and think the Bronte sisters are just about the best thing to emerge from the desolate English moors, you might struggle to look past the bastardisation of the storyline and lack of inventive spin. While I’m not exactly highly recommending this, it is an interesting addition to the ever-widening field of classic adaptations and will appeal to a certain group of enthusiasts.

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

It reminded me of Wuthering Heights: two self-centered people become passionately obsessed with each other, and they call it love.

I don't know whether to credit Croggon's writing style, or her choice to filter the story through the voice of a reasonably nice character, but this book was finishable. (I never made it through Wuthering Heights. Ugh.)

[Lulu (the library leopard) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love a good retelling that manages to perfect capture the dark, gothic atmosphere of the original!

[VR · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange, lyrical, vicious little tale.

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing take on Wuthering Heights. It makes you think about how dark the actual story really is. How was it ever considered a romance?

[C.J. Listro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read more: http://www.sarcasmandlemons.com/2013/...


This is one of those books where I thought, "Hey, that cover is pretty. And look! It's a gothic romance! Based off of Wuthering Heights! That sounds neat!" Now let me tell you, my feelings about Wuthering Heights were: I enjoyed the story immensely even though I hated most of the characters. My experience was very similar with Black Spring. I wanted to wring Lina's spoiled little neck half the time, but the story itself was quite good--and wouldn't have been the same if she'd been kind and not a horrible person. That said, I had mixed feelings. I felt that many parts of the book were too identical to Wuthering Heights to be interesting and many interesting parts of the book that were quite unlike Wuthering Heights were underdeveloped. Overall it was a clever remake with a super clever fantasy environment, but its at-times slavish mimicry of its inspiration caused an otherwise exciting reimagination to fall flat.



plot . 3/5
It was like reading Wuthering Heights all over again. We begin with a totally unnecessary frame of some rich dude named Hammel journeying to the wild magical North. But wait, I thought. Maybe he'll be more integral and this won't be a perfect replication of the frame in Bronte's original. ...Or maybe it'll be exactly the same, down to the dog bite and the storm stranding Hammel with his scowly new landlord, and Hammel then seeking stories from the kindly maid. This wasn't the only passage that could have been lifted directly from WH. It was irritating and unbecoming for a writer who, by the rest of the book's standard, is clearly skilled. Because parts of the plot were exceptionally fascinating. Lina's being a witch, unaccepted in the north; the cult-like wizards; the vendetta and the blood tax--these were brilliant additions that made the story come into its own, rather than being a poor fabrication. However, all of them could have been explored much more deeply and I would have enjoyed the story more. Instead, they seemed more like trivial incidents poked into the preset plot that was little more than a WH rewrite.

concept . 5/5
Croggon gets major points for concept. Her worldbuilding is exceptional and despite my beef with this book, I will read more of her work. To give you a taste, she invents a rough Northern land where wizards enforce the vendetta. Basically, if a man is killed, then the murderer is identified and a bounty is on his head. He gets forty days to set his affairs in order, then the victim's oldest male relative kills him. Then that murder has to be avenged, so the original murderer's male relative kills the other guy. And so on until the town is full of graves and widows. It's a fantastic concept rooted in a pseudo-religious cult and royal schemes, and it's just one of the examples of the strengths in Black Spring. What killed it was that she tried to stick too closely to Bronte, and didn't allow enough of herself to shine through.

characters . 4/5
Just because I hated the characters doesn't mean they weren't good characters. Sometimes, that means that they are. Lina was a self-absorbed, borderline little psychopath but she was well written and drove the story in surprising ways. Damek could have been deeper. I didn't quite buy his love for Lina the way I did Catherine's for Heathcliff. It felt underdeveloped. That said, Anna was lovely. You get a lot of her voice and so you come to know her intimately, and I loved that. Honestly, if Hammel was gone and Anna and the effect of the vendetta on her was more of a focus, I'd have liked the story more. Hammel was pretty useless, unfortunately, and the Wizard Ezra could have had so much more screen time.

style . 5/5
With the exceptions of a few anachronisms ("fad", to name one), Croggon's Victorian style is spot on. It's not as modernized as Sharon Cameron's. Cameron keeps the flavor but sloughs off some of the more difficult diction, so it's more accessible. Croggon goes full on Victorian and the effect is gorgeous. While I can see that some younger readers could find it difficult or cumbersome, I thought it was beautiful and showed a real mastery of Victorian style.

mechanics . 4/5
Get rid of Hammel! He served no purpose except to mimic the original, which was unnecessary anyway!


take home message
A beautifully written gothic romance with fantastical elements; it takes a fine stab at retelling Bronte, but spends too much time paying homage and not enough touting its own unique qualities.

[Mel Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a massive compliment to Alison Croggon that I enjoyed this book as much as I did, because I LOATHE Wuthering Heights. What I admire about Black Spring is that its metatextual relationship to Wuthering Heights is both more obvious and more subtle than I'd expected. But while I can appreciate this book intellectually, emotionally it didn't resonate. I'm left cold by this story and these awful characters.

From reading other aggrieved Goodreads reviews, it seems to me that some readers wanted Black Spring to use its source novel either as a basic plot skeleton to be imported to a completely new fantasy world, or to apply Brontë's gothic themes of doomed, vindictive love in a stark landscape to a different story altogether; hence they were annoyed by how closely Black Spring follows Wuthering Heights in terms of plot, characters, language, setting and even the frame story and epistolary structure. (I was grateful, however, that the intensely dull third act of Brontë's plot is condensed into a few chapters here.)

For me it was like entering a weird parallel universe: one basically the same as Brontë's 19th-century Yorkshire but almost like another country, with a pseudo-feudal system and a kind of Slavic flavour. Powerful wizards act as judges, juries and executioners, administering a royal tradition of tax-collecting via devastating murder vendettas. And women are viewed as chattels, servants and breeders; witches are feared and cast out.

I think people who complain that the fantasy isn't fantastical enough, or the setting or plot aren't innovative enough, have missed the subtlety of the novel's genre play. The early section, narrated by the gormless tenant of 'The Red House' (the Thrushcross Grange stand-in), reminded me of the first section of Dracula, as Jonathan Harker travels to visit Castle Dracula. And the matter-of-fact civic role of magic in Black Spring reminded me of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Basically, Croggon isn't just pastiching Emily Brontë; she's pastiching the 19th-century gothic style more broadly. She uses the device of magic to amplify and ground the ethereal, otherworldly moments in Brontë; and her world-building mounts a commentary on class and gender that's much more pointed than Brontë's.

The Wizard Ezra, the main antagonist, personifies everything that's terrifying and repressive about a state and a society predicated on exploiting women and the common folk to cement ruling-class and capitalist power. The vendetta – in Brontë a multigenerational cycle of misery instigated by Hindley's brutal treatment of Heathcliff – here is amplified and institutionalised as a bloodthirsty northern custom that lays waste to entire villages.

Lina and Damek (the Cathy and Heathcliff characters) have more backstory here (her impetuousness is witchy; he's hinted to be a royal bastard), but those looking for a satisfyingly 'romantic' and 'passionate' love story may be disappointed. Lina regards herself as no man's property, and just wants to be herself; she loves Damek because he helps her access this free, elemental aspect of her nature. His love is at first almost religious adoration, then covetous, and finally vengeful; we see the full ugliness of his obsession, and he's never allowed to be the brooding antihero that Wuthering Heights fans fetishise.

And Croggon's characterisation of Anna (the Nelly character) is much more nuanced, equivocal and sympathetic than in Brontë, where Nelly seems to exist purely as a plot delivery mechanism and disapproving nag: in other words, the avatar of Victorian provincial morality. Here she's young, educated and opinionated, and her own life story unfolds entwined with Lina's.

Perhaps the wickedest satire here is of the city literary scene, as the frame story protagonist is not (as the Goodreads blurb suggests) an 'innocent visitor' but a right dickhead. Far from musing on the vagaries of human nature after hearing the tragic story, he finds it vulgar and boring: pompous poetry is where it's at. It's a jab at the kind of literary bros who turn their noses up at genre fiction and women's stories.