Katherine Arden’s bestselling debut novel spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice. “A beautiful deep-winter story, full of magic and monsters and the sharp edges of growing up.”—Naomi Novik, bestselling author of Uprooted
Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil.
Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring. And indeed, misfortune begins to stalk the village.
But Vasya’s stepmother only grows harsher, determined to remake the village to her liking and to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for marriage or a convent. As the village’s defenses weaken and evil from the forest creeps nearer, Vasilisa must call upon dangerous gifts she has long concealed—to protect her family from a threat sprung to life from her nurse’s most frightening tales.
Praise for The Bear and the Nightingale
“Arden’s debut novel has the cadence of a beautiful fairy tale but is darker and more lyrical.”—The Washington Post
“Vasya [is] a clever, stalwart girl determined to forge her own path in a time when women had few choices.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“Stunning . . . will enchant readers from the first page. . . . with an irresistible heroine who wants only to be free of the bonds placed on her gender and claim her own fate.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Utterly bewitching . . . a lush narrative . . . an immersive, earthy story of folk magic, faith, and hubris, peopled with vivid, dynamic characters, particularly clever, brave Vasya, who outsmarts men and demons alike to save her family.”—Booklist (starred review)
“An extraordinary retelling of a very old tale . . . The Bear and the Nightingale is a wonderfully layered novel of family and the harsh wonders of deep winter magic.”—Robin Hobb
The evil stepmom is a storytelling trope that has roots in reality. In times and places where resources were scarce and women often died (usually of childbirth-related complaints) by early middle adulthood, a new wife who had children of her own looked out for the best interests of her offspring above any others. The most famous literary example of a wicked stepmother? Probably Cinderella. It's a story that's remarkably common around the world: China has a version. Iran has a version. And of course, there's the European takes on the tale that inspired the brothers Grimm. It's this familiar territory that Katherine Arden mines for her debut novel, The Bear and the Nightingale.
Arden gives us as our heroine Vasilisa, the youngest child of Pyotr and Marina. Vasya grows up with her four older siblings in a small village in Russia, bordering the kind of large and dark wood that a good fairy tale needs. After Marina dies in childbirth, the girl grows up half-wild, listening to old Slavic folk tales at the feet of her elderly nurse. But to Vasya, they're not just folk tales. She can see them, the spirits that populate Slavic mythology, and talk to them too. It's a trait she shares with her stepmother-to-be, Anna. But while rural-dwelling Vasya accepts this about herself, Anna, as a member of the urban nobility, is a devout Christian and thinks herself tormented by devils. Once she moves to the countryside after her marriage to Pyotr, the only place she can find peace is the church. She becomes obsessed with the handsome and vain priest, Father Konstantin, who is just as obsessed in turn with rooting out the local superstitions. There's a tinge of American Gods here, because the fading belief saps the strength of the spirits just when they're most needed in a battle brewing between the larger and more powerful forces of evil and of justice.
The characters that populate The Bear and the Nightingale are wonderful. Vasya is a delightfully high-spirited heroine, but what I enjoyed even more was that Arden didn't make Anna a simple bad stepmom. Instead, she's presented as scared, and her behavior towards Vasya is obviously rooted more in this fear than spitefulness. And even though the father in Cinderella stories often comes off as neglectful, Pyotr is a loving parent who has a hard time dealing with his first wife's death, his second wife's obvious mental health issues, and a daughter he doesn't know how to raise. And the world that Arden creates is rich and vivid. It's the first first-in-a-series that I've read in quite a while that's made me actually Google when the next entry is coming out because I want to continue along in the story Arden is beginning to unfold. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it!
