Today, in pretty much one sitting, I read The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. It was fine, a pleasant enough read. The problem is that the whole time I was comparing it to Catherynne Valente’s Deathless and coming up short. I know that’s not fair, but Deathless is more ambitious and the prose is beautiful and, well, now I want to reread that.
But back to Bear and the Nightingale. I did enjoy reading this. In my Goodreads review I posit that it would be nice bath reading, you know, maybe a nice scented candle light, warm water, nothing to do for the foreseeable future, etc. It doesn’t demand too much of the reader, tbh. Actually, what I quite like about this is (and Deathless) is the sort of “well let’s get on with it” vibe that Russian folklore characters have. That stoicism and inner strength and that general sense of fuck you I will survive. I can work with that.
A Cinderella-ish, Jack Frost-ish retelling, Vasilia gets the evil stepmom who isn’t quite evil, just a bit gifted/cursed and overly dependent on religion, while Vasilia herself struggles to retain the old ways because, well, winter is coming and something is waking up and she’s just a bit witchy. There’s country life mentality and fear of the unknown, new and old religions butting heads, lots to enjoy. Also, you know, Vasilia learns the language of horses and I love me horses with attitude. But, it didn’t really leave me gasping. Most of the action feels shoved into the last 30 pages and we don’t get a lot of answers exactly about Vasilia’s mom’s past. Which, I guess, is why this is apparently a series now. Awesome.
Possibly my biggest quibble is that I think the title is . . . misleading? It rolls off the tongue nicely and creates a nice image, but now that I’ve finished the book it seems not quite right. Not to spoil anything, but the “nightingale” part doesn’t come into play until the last section with the real action and honestly is just a supporting character? It’s not a bait and switch or anything but just seems like they went with a title that sounded interesting as opposed to entirely accurate.
The sequel is set to come out in January 2018, so we’ll see how I feel then!
You're Killing Me, Smalls 