Before this week, if you had told me that one of my favourite fantasy books I’ve ever read would be a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin of all things, I would have laughed in your face. But that is one way to describe Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, her follow-up to Uprooted (which was far and away one of my favourite books from a few years ago). Tonally, Spinning Silver is similar to Uprooted. Both feature a non-traditional European fantasy world, in that the Polish grounding for Uprooted and the Slavic folklore for Spinning Silver […]
Naomi Novik is two for two in my book (I still need to read Temeraire!!)
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 […]