English language
Published June 13, 2018 by Random House Publishing Group.
It had some lengths where I didn't see how the story would progress but I love the setting and the references to polish fairy tales. They add so much more depth to the story than the unified, disneyfied fairytales generally retold.
Great female characters, doing it for themselves! Love the fantasy Russian setting and Jewish culture. Fresh and different.
Great progression of characters, and done with a particularly nice theme in how they're introduced. I imagine the explicit inclusion of Judaism in the novel may confuse some readers, but it does a nice job highlighting what we normally bring into fantasy settings with our assumptions.
Was not as good as Uprooted. I think Uprooted had some flaws (silly ending, Mary Sue main character) that were minimized by the general pace of the book and the likability of Agnieska. Spinning Silver is paced much slower, and suffers from the lack of a strong main character. Miryem is fine, but the inclusion of multiple points of view was overall a weakness. I dreaded reading Stepon sections - child POVs are best avoided in my opinion.
This was an interesting read. It follows in the footsteps of Uprooted, where Novik started to re-examine Eastern European fairytales. I found Uprooted quite entertaining, so Spinning Silver was an easy sell. In this book the author goes even deeper into the lives of ordinary people in an extraordinary world. We start by following Miryem, the daughter of Jews living in some small village in some Eastern European-ish country. Their world is very familiar, except for the presence of supernatural creatures, the Staryk. Throughout the book we see many first person perspectives, besides Miryem's. The idea was, I guess, to show how people in fairytales might experience the events of their story. When the storyteller talks about "the moneylender's daughter" we don't get her backstory, her thoughts, her actions. In this book we do and I liked that.
A fairy-tale fantasy story, about deals made without understanding all the consequences of them, of ice and fire demons. It starts so strong I was sure this was going to be a 5-star for me, but it's narrated in first-person and we switch between (at least) half a dozen different people and frankly some of the characters aren't helping anything much, e.g. when we're following the youngest boy in the story, Stepon, the writing style takes a sharp turn from the preceding narrator to how a relatively-noncommunicative youth would think of what's happening around him. We are left to figure out who the narrator is from context - I read in some other review saying that different people had a different symbol at the start of their sections and if you remembered which symbol corresponded to which person you could keep up more easily. Not a big fan of this …
A fairy-tale fantasy story, about deals made without understanding all the consequences of them, of ice and fire demons. It starts so strong I was sure this was going to be a 5-star for me, but it's narrated in first-person and we switch between (at least) half a dozen different people and frankly some of the characters aren't helping anything much, e.g. when we're following the youngest boy in the story, Stepon, the writing style takes a sharp turn from the preceding narrator to how a relatively-noncommunicative youth would think of what's happening around him. We are left to figure out who the narrator is from context - I read in some other review saying that different people had a different symbol at the start of their sections and if you remembered which symbol corresponded to which person you could keep up more easily. Not a big fan of this mechanism!
But the story, especially the first half and the wrapup, were so much fun I'd still recommend this one no problem. I had a great time with this story!
I was lucky enough to get an ARC at the Nebula Conference. I loved "Uprooted", and I feel like this book, while not in any way a sequel, has all the virtues of "Uprooted". I couldn't put it down -- I started it late Saturday evening, and finished it before supper on Sunday. Yes, I did sleep for 8 hours.
It's initially told from the point of view of one young girl, but gradually more and more characters' voices join the tale. A girl hired to work for the family, that girl's little brother, the ignored, plain daughter of a duke. Their stories draw together as their world is threatened by a two malign forces.
As in "Uprooted", the day-to-day and personal interactions are just as important as the sweeping clash. There are echoes of fairy tales, from Rumplestiltskin, the Snow Queen, Hansel and Gretel, and probably others that I …
I was lucky enough to get an ARC at the Nebula Conference. I loved "Uprooted", and I feel like this book, while not in any way a sequel, has all the virtues of "Uprooted". I couldn't put it down -- I started it late Saturday evening, and finished it before supper on Sunday. Yes, I did sleep for 8 hours.
It's initially told from the point of view of one young girl, but gradually more and more characters' voices join the tale. A girl hired to work for the family, that girl's little brother, the ignored, plain daughter of a duke. Their stories draw together as their world is threatened by a two malign forces.
As in "Uprooted", the day-to-day and personal interactions are just as important as the sweeping clash. There are echoes of fairy tales, from Rumplestiltskin, the Snow Queen, Hansel and Gretel, and probably others that I missed as I read head-long to see how things would come out. The characters are never one-dimensional. They keep unfolding layers, just like real people, only more interesting. ;-)
