Katherine Arden

"In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, Pytor hides the gift away and Vasya grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that, armed only with the necklace, she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay"--

The Bear and the Nightingale

“Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya,” he murmured over her head. “And both are mine.”

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”

“Nothing changes, Vasya. Things are, or they are not. Magic is forgetting that something ever was other than as you willed it.”

“You are too attached to things as they are,” said Morozko, combing the mare’s withers. He glanced down idly. “You must allow things to be what best suits your purpose. And then they will.”

"I do not understand “damned.” You are. And because you are, you can walk where you will, into peace, oblivion, or pits of fire, but you will always choose."

He wanted to seize her, kiss her, hurt her, he did not know what.

“It is easy to die,” replied the bannik. “Harder to live.

Before the end, you will pluck snowdrops at midwinter, die by your own choosing, and weep for a nightingale.

"But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before."

She looked like a wild thing new-caught and just barely groomed into submission.

The serving-women muttered that she could tame animals, dream the future, and summon rain.

In Russian, Frost was called Morozko, the demon of winter. But long ago, the people called him Karachun, the death-god. Under that name, he was king of black midwinter who came for bad children and froze them in the night.

Syrina

his wailing hung like mist over the silent village

The prince arrived just as pale spring became dazzling summer with a tender, capricious sky and the fading flowers buried in a wash of summer grass.

Taryn

“Even the maidens of fairy tales do not always end happily. Alenushka was turned into a duck and watched the wicked witch butcher her duck-children” 

(Bre)anne✨

“My people,” said Vasya, very low. They wept before the icons while the domovoi starved. I do not know them. They have changed and I have not. Aloud she said, “I am not afraid.”

She is not afraid, Konstantin thought dourly. She does not fear God; she fears nothing. He saw it in her silences, her fey glance, the long hours she spent in the forest. In any case, no good Christian maid ever had eyes like that, or walked with such grace in the dark.

Father understands wild beasts and raiders, thought Vasya. But sin and damnation cannot be fought.

“I beat her when I could and forbade her to talk of it. I thought, maybe, that if I caught her young enough, the madness wouldn’t take hold.”

Vasya half-smiled. “Are you going to save us, then?”

“If God gives me strength, I will save you.”

“I am only a country girl,” said Vasya. She reached again into the blackberry bush, wary of thorns. “I have never seen Tsargrad, or angels, or heard the voice of God. But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before.”

She is ugly, thought Konstantin, and then he wondered at himself. What was it to him if a girl was ugly?

All that winter his infant daughter had screamed, and he could not bear to look the baby in the face, because her mother had chosen the child and not him.

Tell me truly, what is there for me here but walls and cages? I will be free, and I will not count the cost.

Chase Leitner

Melissa

I was a little worried about this book. I loved the goblin emperor, so I thought I would love this book as well. While I did end up loving this book, I felt the beginning was a little slow. It really picked up about half way through. It took me over a month to get through the first half and then I finished it in a day. Katharine Arden really has a knack for creating a world that you can lose yourself in. I am extremely excited to read book 2!

Stephanie Boisvert

I enjoyed this book, wouldn’t say it’s my favorite but I think it was a fun seasonal read and I liked how it explored paganism/ woman’s roles. 3/4 out of 5 for me. Rounding up to 4.

Ashley Denktas

Annabella

The Bear and The Nightingale

Maureen

“I do not understand ‘damned.’ You are. And because you are, you can walk where you will, into peace, oblivion, or pits of fire, but you will always choose.”

***

Such a cozy read! My first venture into fantasy novels. The world building was great, so I could forgive the slow plot. But since this is a coming-of-age story, it makes sense Arden focuses on Vasya’s upbringing. The prose was lovely, and the imagery vivid enough for me to imagine the piling of snow, the family gathering around the hearth, and the household creatures and wood spirits lurking about. Looking forward to the second book of this trilogy! I hope for more interactions between Vasya and Morozko—the latter seems to be capable of more than what the lore affords him.

Linara K.S

The start really threw me off, but then a hundred pages in and I was hooked.
From the folklore, to the drama and the mystery . . .
This is definitely reread worthy.
Vasilisa Petrovna you go girl.

I’m always happy to forgo this world for that of fairy tales 

arwen

Hanna Rybchynska

The Bear and the Nightingale is an unexpected book. First, it has a world of its own. Second, its' unpredictably predictable. 

However, sometimes it gets hard to read it. Especially if you are not familiar with some worlds. I think the author didn't explain well how this world works. I also felt that at the beginning of the book it is a bit boring. 

Overall it is an amazing book!

Sarah Sammis

I love the author's newer, shorter books. This one though, I know will be a slog that I don't enjoy. I'm 50 pages in and bored and frustrated. It's actually my husband's book and he's much more into Russian folklore than I am, so he can have his book back.

The final blow for me though, beyond the frustration and boredom, was the realization things wouldn't / couldn't go well for the main character. She's sold off to a marriage to a much older cousin. The Bear and the Nightingale reads like literary agony porn, and I have other things I would rather spend my time with.

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2023/comm...

akynn 

3.73 Stars

I really enjoyed this book it had a beautiful atmosphere and setting. The writing was great, and I feel like this was a great introduction to Russian mythology for me. Something I did wish was a little more developed, or just progressed more was the relationships between the characters, specifically with Vasilisa's siblings. I loved the relationship she had with her family, and family is already a large part of the novel but just personally, I wish there was more to it. I think this might have had to do with the fact that I went into this book thinking there was a romance, and since there wasn't (not that I was really disappointed), I really honed in on Vasilisa's other relationships. 

Something else that really took away for my enjoyment of this novel were the ages. I loved many aspects of this book, but the character's ages wasn't one of them. I understand wanting to be historically accurate but this is a fantasy novel, its okay to age the characters up. I'm trying to think of a possible reason to why the Vasilisa was so young, like how this book is the first in a series, but everything I think up doesn't have any back to it. I really liked this book but if all the characters, especially the girls getting married and having children, could be aged up a bit, I would've liked it even more.

All in all, I definitely want to continue this series and see where Vasilisa's life takes her. And I cannot help but hope that we finally get to see her siblings again.

britt

Laurianne

“Will you bear me to the ends of the earth, if the road will take us so far?”

Vasilisa or Vasya is the last child of Pyotr and Marina. She inherits her grandmother's powers that makes the girl different from the other siblings. All of whom are being taken care by Dunya, an old nursemaid that loves to tell stories. With Marina dying at childbirth, Pyotr was forced to marry a young woman named Anna, then later being gifted another daughter. As Vasya grows up, it's obvious that her stepmother doesn't fancy her very much and it only intensifies as she suspects Vasya for bringing demons all around her and dangers start lurking about their lands.

I ought to write this review now while the memory is still fresh. But hey, I may have just found my best read of 2023! Yay!
I have always loved winter setting in a book, it feels magical, though unsettling, with all those creatures that befriend our Vasya. I hate Anna's character so much, that I'm actually not sorry of what happened to her. But I truly didn't expect to shed tears during that part. I love the battle part so much, I think it was well-written. I can scarcely wait to pick up the second book already and see what awaits in the future.

A novel inspired by Russian fairy tales follows the experiences of a wild young girl who taps the mysterious powers of a precious necklace given to her father years earlier to save her village from dark and dangerous forces.

taryn

3.5 

Slow to get into, but the second half picks up!

Kelsey Munson

The atmosphere here is beautifully descriptive and lyrical. That being said, this was one of the slowest stories I've read this year. Didn't really pick up for me until a bit past the halfway mark. If you are big into historical fiction with fantasy/fairytale elements, this is an enchanting read. But if you're looking for a ton of action or a quick paced plot, I imagine you will be disappointed here. 

I fall somewhere between 3.5-4⭐ and I look forward to continuing on with the series.

Bear and the Nightingale

Jenny Smoothy

Rohit Arondekar

I think this is the first time I've read a fictional book set in Russia and I loved the world, magic system and the little details. The writing is beautiful and engaging making you want to turn the page and find out what will happen next! I've found that not all writers can have this effect. The world reminded me of Winterfell from Game of Thrones (both the book and series) and the writing was like reading J. K Rowling. I can't wait to read the next book in the series!

Krystyna 

I really loved this book. The first part was a slow-burn for me, which I kind of anticipated because of world-building, a magic system, and characters. It took me a while to get through this book but I really enjoyed it. As with any fantasy, it takes a little bit for the world-building and magic systems to be set up for the reader. So, the first half of the book is rather slow but the last half is a whirlwhind. The last half kept me turning the pages, especially part three. Vasilisa was a kick-butt female character that I loved. I also really liked Frost/Morozko/the winter demon, whichever you want to refer to him as. The story is very fairytale-like, and at times whimisical. It is based off of Russian folklore so it is a fairytale fantasy that is set in medieval Russia. I thought that the writing was beautiful and very atmospheric. It blended Russian culture, history, politics, religion, etc all in this dark, winter fairytale. If you can power through the first part it gets more intriguing as you keep reading. I did end up really loving this book and plan to continue on in this series.

Teeeeeesha

A brave girl that can see the old gods and spirits in the catholic Russia teams up with the human embodiment of winter.

momo-reads

A very slow start, I almost gave up more than once.  The second half is fantastic in a magical, hard, fairy tale way.

Wynter

"In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year..." This sounds like it's a book about my hometown. Can't wait to read!



UPDATE: Well, I have read it. I must say Arden did an excellent job researching the material. She built upon a great variety of fairytales from Russian folklore. She skillfully navigated the Kievan Rus' nobility and parried the diminutive versions of archaic names with cold precision. I applaud her for this job well done. Except something does bug me a lot: I've never heard a Vasilisa called Vasya, which is actually a form of very common male name Vasily. In Western culture it might be okay to call Samantha "Sam", but in Russia it is simply not done. But I'm sure that was done for the benefit of the Western reader, and cannot be held against the author.

The reason why I'm giving this book only three stars is quite simple. Because I was already familiar with the folklore and the cultural aspects (I grew up on this stuff, after all), I was left to judge the story itself, stripped of enchanted embellishments. Unfortunately beyond the fantastic elements the storyline does not hold its own. 

I found it rather boring and full of the usual tropes. While I was fascinated in the beginning with the world building and the introduction of various characters, the dragged out middle part of seemingly unrelated occurrences really made me want to quit the book. I hated Anna and wished her character was a bit more sympathetic than just a typical evil step-mother. I wish the author tried to tell her side of the story, being terrified of seeing things others didn't and being called crazy her entire life. I also disliked the priest, though I understand how his misguided righteousness benefited the plot. My favourite characters were of course the enchanted folk, like the domovoy, leshy, rusalka, and others, and though they were not Arden's creations she managed to give them interesting voices. 

Through sheer determination I got myself to the end, but even that did not leave me satisfied. The pacing was uneven, the conflict - unappealing, and I could not find myself rooting for the characters. Instead I was counting pages left until freedom. I think Arden did a great job for a debut novel, and I see a lot people really loving it, but unfortunately it didn't work that well for me. 

If you are curious about some of the fairytales mentioned in the books, watch these:

Morozko (1964)
Twelve Months (1956)

Courtney

I really can't say that I was a fan of this one.

Colleen

4.5 Stars but I'm rounding up to 5 Stars

This review contains minor spoilers.

I was afraid I was going to have a slump while I wait impatiently for A Conjuring of Light. So I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up The Bear and the Nightingale from the new release shelf at the library.

I love books about folklore and mythology particularly those that are lesser known. The Bear and the Nightingale is a retelling of Russian folklore set in Rural Russia during the reign of Ivan II (so somewhere in the mid 1300's). The setting was well done. I felt like I was there in the snowy woods listening those stories of household spirits and frost demons and other mythical creatures. I loved the way the book started with those stories being told to the children, but slowly the creatures became entwined in their real lives. Beneath the surface of the story was the age old tug of war between one's local traditions and conformity to society at large, between the old ways and new ways (well, new for the fourteenth century anyway, but that power struggle is still relevant today). 

The writing was rich and atmospheric. It had the air of old stories. Not the sanitized, Disneyized, watered-down fairy tales that we now find most of the time. Rather this was something closer to the roots of these types of stories with enough darkness and somberness to keep the stakes high. I am not familiar enough with Russian folklore to say how authentic the tales were or how much they were adapted for this book, but they felt genuine enough to an outsider.

I was surprised that the story focused more on the family overall and not specifically on Vasya. She certainly is the center of the story, the crux and the catalyst, but the story is as much about her family as it is about her. This was also not really young adult even though the main character is a teenager for most of the story. The story follows how the decisions made by each member of the family affect each other and have longer reaching consequences than any of them expected. That added another layer to the story which I enjoyed.

The setting adds another historical aspect - specifically what women's lives were like in those times. As the story observes, women in those days only had two life paths: get married to someone of their family's choosing or be sent away to a convent. Either way their lives were not really their own. Some readers might be off-put by the oppressiveness of this or disturbed by how much women were forced to submit to the men in their lives, but it was the reality for women of that time (and sadly still is in some places in our world). But the women of this story vary greatly in how they handle this misogyny. From those who submit mindlessly to Vasya, our strong and independent heroine. 

I would have liked more insight into Vasya's mind. But she was still a fascinating character. Despite not knowing her inner thoughts, it was easy to see her motivations and so easy to cheer for her. The characters were so well drawn. The bad ones were easy to hate. The creepy ones were creepy enough to cause shivers. (view spoiler)[ Seriously, that priest disturbed me. And I could not stand Anna and her ignorant fear and cruelty. (hide spoiler)] The threads of each character weave together into something elegant with a timeless feel.

While it did not bother me, some readers may find the Russian names and words a little tough to chew at times. For me, it added authenticity. I know it would have driven me nuts if the characters had modern American names. While the names themselves did not bother me, I did get confused at times because most of the characters are referred to by their actual names as well as nicknames. Vasilisa was Vasya, Nikolai was Koyla, Aleksandr was Sasha, etc.. Some of those nicknames were not easily relatable to the characters' given names, and I did sometimes lose track of who was who among some of the secondary characters. There is a glossary of words in the back of the book but no guide for the characters' names.

Overall, this was very good for a debut. No, The Bear and the Nightingale was not a perfect book. There were some rough spots, a lot of characters and plot lines to keep track of, and the ending felt a tad rushed. But it was different and a breath of fresh of air. It was particularly good for a debut novel which is why I went ahead and rounded my rating up to five stars. I was not expecting it to be a series though. It was not marked as one when I initially picked this up. But I will definitely continue on with the series and look forward to reading more from this author in the future.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 5 Stars
Writing Style: 5 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 4 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 4 Stars
Level of Captivation: 5 Stars
Originality: 5 Stars

The Bear and the Nightingale

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