Author: Katherine Arden
Series: WINTERNIGHT TRILOGY
Genre: Fantasy (based on Russian fairy/folk tales)
Ratings: Violence—4; Sensuality—2; Humor—2
Publisher: Del Rey
The Bear and the Nightingale (6/2017)
The Girl in the Tower (12/2017)
This first
entry in my ongoing review of the WINTERNIGHT TRILOGY begins with a brief overview of the series world-building
followed by the publisher's blurb for The Bear and the Nightingale along with my
review. I will add to this post as the remaining novels are published.
WORLD-BUILDING
The first thing you need to know is that Arden uses many Russian terms
in her storytelling. Luckily for the reader, she includes a glossary to explain
each one of them. Whenever I use any of those Russian words in this post, I
will highlight it in orange. Whew, what a relief it was to find
that glossary at the end of book one!
The series is set in the 14th century in northern Russia and
focuses on the family of Pyotr Vladimirovich. Pyotr is a boyar—a
member of the aristocracy second in rank only to a prince—but he lives
the same humble life style as his tenants. Arden includes extensive
descriptions of the natural features of Pyotr's lands, particularly the forest,
which is the favorite place for his youngest daughter, Vasilisa (aka
Vasya) to wander.
Vasya is the heroine of the series—at least that is the case in
the first novel, which follows her from her birth to her teen-age years. But
Pyotr also provides a large group of richly developed secondary characters,
both human and mythical/magical, with whom Vasya interacts. In fact, magic
plays a major role in the series in the form of various creatures, including
helpful spirits and guardians, evil demons, and even the dreaded upyry (Russian
vampires). Although most of the villagers believe that these mythical creatures
exist only in an invisible form, Vasya alone can actually see them and interact
with them, a fact that she tries to keep hidden from her family and neighbors
for fear of being labeled a witch.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR: Born
in Austin, Texas, Katherine Arden spent a year of high school in Rennes,
France. Following her acceptance to Middlebury College in Vermont, she deferred
enrollment for a year in order to live and study in Moscow. At Middlebury, she
specialized in French and Russian literature. After receiving her BA,
she moved to Maui, Hawaii, working every kind of odd jobs imaginable from
grant writing and making crêpes to guiding horse trips. Currently she lives in
Vermont. For more information, click HERE to
go to the "About" page on Arden's web site.
NOVEL 1: The Bear and the Nightingale
PUBLISHER'S BLURB:
A magical debut novel for readers of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted,
Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman’s myth-rich
fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible
spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice.
At the edge
of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts
grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights
huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her
nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the
blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls.
Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard
and forest that protect their homes from evil.
After
Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife.
Fiercely devout and city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family
from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is
frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.
And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.
As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves
and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect
her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most
frightening tales.
MY
REVIEW:
The book begins in the depths of the Russian winter. Here is the
opening sentence: "It was late winter in northern Rus', the
air sullen with wet that was neither rain nor snow. 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."
As the family members huddle around the
huge oven trying to keep warm, Dunya, the children's elderly
nurse, tells them the tale of Frost, who is both an evil demon (called Morozko)
and the god of death (called Karachun). Dunya's story is a folktale in which a
villainous stepmother hates her husband's young daughter, Marfa, so much that
she wishes her dead. After mistreating Marfa badly, the stepmother forces her
husband to take Marfa deep into the snowy woods and leave her as an offering to
Morozko, hoping that the girl will freeze to death. But Marfa charms Frost and
he sends her home with many rich gifts. The stepmother is enraged and jealous
so she insists that her husband take her own daughter, Liza, out into the woods
and leave her in the snow, just as he did with Marfa. But Liza is rude to Frost
so he leaves her to freeze to death. When the husband goes to retrieve Liza and
brings back her frozen corpse, the wife drops dead with grief. This story
comprises the entire first chapter, and you can be sure that it plays a huge
part in the overall plot of the novel. You'll see it coming when Pyotr's wife,
Marina, dies in childbirth early in the story only to be replaced a number of
chapters later by a very unlikable stepmother.
We soon learn that Vasya, the child who survived the birth that
killed her mother, has inherited "the sight" from her mother's side
of the family. In this rural, isolated countryside, people leave offerings of
food and drink to the spirits or guardians of various places (for example, the
hearth, the stable, the woods, the lake). But Vasya is the only one who can
actually see those spirits and converse with them. By the time she realizes
that people don't know who she is talking to when she speaks aloud to the spirits,
most of the villagers believe that she is a witch (which, actually, she is).
Vasya loves the forest and spends much of her childhood running off to talk
with the spirits who live there, including the leshy (woodland
spirit and protector of animals) and the rusalka (female water
nymph).
The story takes us through the seasons, with Arden providing
enchanting descriptions of the natural changes of the land and life styles as
the weather transitions from frigid to warm to hot and back to cold. She
describes the many changes in the fields and forest as the years and the
seasons pass and how those changes affect the lives of Pyotr
Vladimirovich's family.
Arden divides the story into three parts. The first part
introduces Pyotr's family, their complicated history, and the importance of the
ancient spirits to the daily life of his people. Arden's realistic and
touching descriptions of the interactions among the members of Pyotr's family
are impressive, particularly the relationships among Vasya and her siblings:
three brothers and a sister. Vasya's bond with her brother Alyosha is particularly
close. Although they have their differences, they stand up for one another and
have a deep familial bond.
The second part adds complications to their peaceful life when Pyotr
and his two oldest sons go off to Moscow, and he returns with a deeply unstable
new wife named Anna. Soon thereafter, another new arrival adds even more
turmoil: an arrogant new priest named Konstantin. Tension begins building as
soon as they arrive when Anna immediately takes a deep dislike to Vasya. Then
the priest begins to preach against the ancient spirits in emotional, hellfire-and-brimstone
sermons calculated to frighten them into turning all of their attentions to the
single God to whom he prays. Vasya refuses to join the other villagers in
bowing only to Konstantin's God. She sees that the ancient spirits are fading
away from neglect and that the crops are failing and the storms are destroying
the land, so she speaks out against the priest's fear-mongering: "I am only a country
girl...I have never seen...angels, or heard the voice of God. But I think you
should be careful...that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing.
We have never needed saving before."
Meanwhile, deep in the forest, Frost learns that a demon that he
bound a century ago has awakened and is on the verge of breaking free. In the
final section of the book, magic plays a much bigger role as Arden accelerates
the action, amps up the suspense, and resolves most of the conflicts. Although
there are some light-hearted moments in the first two sections, it is in the
final section that Arden adds several truly funny moments (mostly in the form
of snarky dialogue) to the drama and violence of the major showdown that brings
the book to a close.
This book doesn't exactly have an HEA ending. It's not sad (well,
except that a few characters don't make it through to the end), but for Vasya,
it's more like a question mark—a what's-coming-next kind of ending.
Arden does a magnificent job of weaving together Russian folklore
with the everyday elements of life in feudal Russia. Her descriptive language
allows the reader to feel the cold and the rain, to smell the earth in the
spring and summer fields, and to hear the leaves blowing in the wind. Here is a
lovely description of the coming of fall: "Fall came at last to
lay cool fingers on the summer-dry grass; the light went from gold to gray and
the clouds grew damp and soft."
Also impressive are Arden's realistic and touching descriptions of
the interactions among the members of Pyotr's family, particularly Vasya and
her siblings, three brothers and a sister. Vasya's
bond with her brother Alyosha is particularly close. Although they
have their difference, they stand up for one another and have a deep familial
bond.
I confess that I am not a big fan of fairy-tale fantasies set in
ancient times, but this book drew me in immediately with its fantastical plot,
layered characters, and slowly building suspense. Vasya is a terrific
heroine—an independent young women in a culture that does not reward
free-thinking females.
Click HERE to read excerpts on Arden's
web site with comments from the author. Click HERE to read or listen to excerpts
on the novel's Amazon.com page by clicking either on the cover art for print or the
"Listen" icon for audio. Click HERE for a reading guide to the
novel on the publisher's web site.
No comments:
Post a Comment