The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden
I struggled a bit with this book, which surprised me. It’s not the fairytale-like narration, because that worked for me, nor the choice of setting (semi-historical Russia), or the characters, or the choice of fairytales to invoke. Perhaps it’s just that I felt I knew where it was going and how it would unfold, and I am so very tired of stories all about taming a wild young woman who doesn’t belong among her people.
It’s well written, and I enjoyed the Russian flavour – probably helped by the fact that I don’t know Russian well at all, so the words chosen to give a flavour didn’t contradict each other in the way they were Romanised or used. I do enjoy Vasya and her determination, her basic goodness, her love for her family and duty to the people who, unknowingly, relied upon her. I enjoyed the little snippets that joined it to history.
I just… didn’t quite click with it in some way I can’t put my finger on. I’m glad I read it, and I’ll probably pick up the second book to see how I get into that, but… something didn’t work for me.
Sorry to hear you didn’t like this as much as you expected, let’s hope the second book will click with you more 🙂
Yes, I hope so!
I really enjoyed this book for all the reasons you mention, but I can see how it might just not click for some readers. I think I really liked it because it had been awhile since I’d read that type of story.
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I’ve got an ARC of the second book and I’m fairly interested in getting to it, so there was definitely stuff there that worked for me. I just felt a bit distant, somehow!