Okay, I’m going to be upfront here that this was a book club pick (my book club pick, actually), and we broke a cardinal rule: never read the first in a series. It’s incredibly difficult to judge character arcs and abandoned plot lines, because you know that the story is only just beginning. That also makes it difficult to write a fair review, but I will try.
Do you love whimsical stories rooted in complicated family dynamics? Apparently I do, because I adored reading this book. The Bear and the Nightingale is the first installment in The Winternight Trilogy, by Katherine Arden. It is a lovely fairytale mostly set in the medieval white winters of northern Russia, rife with monsters, helpful creatures, and even a wicked stepmother. Arden creates a charming world of frost and magic that could easily enchant an unsuspecting reader, like myself, into believing it is a reinvention of the classic genre. It is not.
To read the rest of the review, click here.