Vasya is a normal girl “too tall, skinny as a weasel, feet and face like a frog”. She is not the clichéd ‘perfect beauty’ nor does she defy everything her elders say which is the easiest way to drive the plot forward in most fantasy reads. Vasya is definitely a perfect heroine for me. I could feel even the flutter of a leaf in the woods and every splatter of snow as Vasya jumps onto it. The book is strewn with lyrical phrases some examples are “The years slipped by like leaves,” ”air sullen with wet that was neither rain nor snow” and “the clouds lay like wet wool above trees.” Arden is a persuasive writer who not only captures the attention of the reader but transports the reader into Vasya’s world. I found this extremely charming and it took me back to the times when my grandfather used to tell stories.Ī storyteller's paradise with Slavic myths set in Rus' woods Click To Tweet Enchanting ProseĪrden’s prose is delicious. In addition to the main storyline there are many stories in the book, some of them told over a crackling fire.
It was the stunning cover that grabbed my attention first and the cover designed by David Grogan and Aitch was one of the Best book covers of 2017 The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden It was absolutely delightful in every page. The family starts a new life not knowing the strange power stirring in the woods that can threaten their existence and claim Vasya for itself. Soon Pyotr remarries Anna from Moscow because he feels the kids (especially Vasya) are running too wild because they are growing motherless. Thus Vasya is born and Marina dies in childbirth. His wife, Marina, who has fey-like blood in her from her mother’s side, longs for another child who will have magic in her. Pyotr has three healthy sons and a daughter. Pyotr Vladimirovich, the boyar, and his family live happily in the woods. The story takes place in the wild woods of northern Rus’. How can anyone not pick up a book that begins with a stunning passage as this? The rest of the book just gets better, let me assure you. But no one was thinking of chilblains or runny noses, or even, wistfully, of porridge and roast meats, for Dunya was to tell a story.” The brilliant February landscape had given way to the dreary gray of March, and the household of Pyotr Vladimirovich were all sniffling from the damp and thin from six weeks’ fasting on black bread and fermented cabbage. “It was late winter in northern Rus’, the air sullen with wet that was neither rain nor snow. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden is a stunning, magical debut, As Vasya grows older, a dark force grows stronger in the woods. Her mother dies in childbirth with the hope that she has passed on her magical lineage to the new child. In a village in northern Rus’ a girl named Vasya is born.
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