I read most of this book in a day. It was so charming and lovely. In the vein of Uprooted, Spinning Silver is another loosely inspired retelling of a fairytale, this time Rumplestiltskin. I’m honestly not sure which book I liked better. It’s been a while since I read Uprooted, and this book is one of those that gets better in your head the longer you sit with it after you finish. Our Rumplestiltskin is actually one of our heroines, Miryem, the daughter of a moneylender (a historically […]
Why is it always the deal breakers that end up the hero in fairy tales?
While I definitely grew up with all the normal fairy tales that inspired Disney movies, I also remember Rumpelstilzchen (German version) leaving a deep impression. I can’t remember if it was because the story creeped me out (I mean, he tears himself in two when he loses the deal) or if I thought there was something unjust about the treatment of either him or the spinner’s daughter but I certainly thought it was an interesting choice when he became such a central figure in Once […]
I am not your subject or your servant, and if you want a cowering mouse for a wife, go find someone else who can turn silver to gold for you.
This is a novel that I don’t really need to explain too much because I have to imagine for a lot of readers on this website, it’s already on their radar. The story here takes place more or less in the same world as her previous novel Uprooted, a middle ages version of Poland where the magic of myth and legends function alongside history and lived-culture. So in this world, there’s a fairy world, but there’s also Judaism, for example. The story is told initially […]
How he trained his dragon
Captain Will Laurence has spent his life in the Navy, and expects it to continue that way. However, being currently embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars, that life soon comes to an end – but not through death. Instead, having captured a French ship, Captain Laurence’s ship takes its cargo as a prize…a large dragon’s egg, whose inhabitant decides upon hatching that Captain Laurence will do nicely for a handler. In this alternate history, dragons that aren’t paired with handlers tend to go feral, therefore losing […]
Stay out of the forest…
I haven’t read any Naomi Novik before, but this was recommended on one of those ‘If you liked this, you’ll like…’ on finishing The Bear and the Nightingale, with which it shares a fairytale feel and a young woman coming of age and magic, surrounded by a malignant forest. Uprooted isn’t quite as good as The Bear and The Nightingale, but was good enough for me to note Novik as one to read more from. Agnieska lives in the village of Dvernik where, every ten […]
Hammond looked like Pandora, the box open and horrors loose upon the world. Laurence was inclined to laugh, but he stifled it out of sympathy.
I like fantasy novels more or less, but I find them to be rather hard to review. I think that while on the one hand, I enjoy them and even respect them, I don’t always find myself with much in the way of salient topics to discuss. So for this one, it’s more or less the case. I enjoyed it. I did take my a long time between the first in the series and this one, because I listened to that in audiobook form. And […]
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