The Bear and the Nightingale

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind--she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed--this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

I’ve never felt this conflicted about rating a book before but after thinking about what I liked and what I didn’t, I’m settling for 2/5 stars.

The Bear and the Nightingale had many things I love: atmospheric writing, great storytelling, fascinating magical creatures, and a story set in Russia in wintertime. The book has a dark fairytale feel to it, blending Russian folklore and history, and I was SO ready to love it and give it all the stars.

But I didn’t. The good was outweighed by the bad and I’m in the minority on this one.

I get it, it’s set in mid-fourteenth century Russia where women were treated like property and had no say in the lives they wanted to live. There was marital rape, sexual harassment, and a recurring theme of how women had two choices in life: marriage or the convent. It’s not like I’ve never read books with these subject matters before but I just felt like it could have been handled better. I got tired of Arden constantly writing derogatory remarks against women and every time I read it, it overshadowed things I was currently enjoying in the book. The marital rape specifically bothered me a lot because it was nowhere hinted that the husband, for one, had such tendency before it actually happened and when it did, he showed a bit of remorse and continued doing it.

I also had issues with some of the characters’ developments. Some of them immediately got worse and then instantly got better at the last 20% portion of the book. I particularly hoped the book would do something different about the stepmother trope but I also get that it had to follow the fairytale in the story. That said, I didn’t find the stepmother’s transition from good to abusive very convincing and it makes me wish the book was just a little bit longer to polish these things. I can also see how the author was trying to show this great contrast between Vasya and the other women in the story. Vasya is the only one going against the grain and look at how amazing she is! It was great at first but 1) she’s the MC so she’s already ‘special’ and it’s expected and 2) she stayed the same all throughout and instead felt flat to me. Here’s a cutout of the ideal female protagonist. Yawn. I just want convincing characters!

Another theme in this novel is religion vs. mythology and I’m so done with authors handling this poorly. I’m sick of the religious fanatic trope and you can tell me over and over again that this is historical fiction and all that but it’s also fictional and writers can do something different.

On top of all this, the book also struggled with pacing. I don’t mind slow books but I didn’t like how it picked up significantly at the 80% mark. Significant characters also show up at this point and while it felt like I was reading a different and far more interesting book, I was also underwhelmed by the reveal behind the book’s title. The villain is made out to be this powerful and frightening being but his defeat was so easy it actually felt like a joke.

Overall, I loved the first 15% and last 20% of this book but it wasn’t enough for me to love the rest. If you read this with everything I’ve mentioned in mind, along with reading it as a fairytale with familiar tropes and not minding it, you may enjoy this more than I did.