Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you’re all doing well. Today I’m posting my review of book one in the Winternight trilogy, The Bear and the Nightingale by: Katherine Arden.

The Bear and the Nightingale by: Katherine Arden: Vasya and her family like to spend their long winter nights by the fire listening to fairy tales. When their widowed father brings home a new wife, she wants nothing to do with their fairy tales and slowly starts to shape the village to the way she wants it. This means Vasya must marry or join a convent, but Vasya is having none of that and instead calls upon the household spirits and fairy tales to protect her family. This novel was so lush in its writing; the prose was absolutely gorgeous and really lulled the reader into the story. It didn’t start out that way though; this started off with a cast of characters and a lot of movement that it was confusing to follow along with. But once the reader started to get into the story things started to make sense and fall into place. The plot was so exquisitely done; the way they weaved into one another was well crafted. The reader didn’t know what to expect from any of the plotlines, just being on the adventure was enough to keep reading. The Russian folklore was so well integrated into the narrative; it was different and gave a fresh perspective to the story. The pacing was slow, but on the flip side, time moved so quickly, like seasons came and went in the span of a chapter sometimes and that’s possibly why the reader had a hard time getting into this at first. The set up took time but we were moving through seasons in this world rather quickly, so keeping track of everything was a little difficult. At the end of the day, this novel picked up so well that the beginning is forgotten by the end because the world building was that good. The characters, especially the main one, was a force to be reckoned with. She was fierce, brave and just powerful in the things she wanted. She would never take no for an answer and the reader really admired her passion for not going with the flow but standing up for herself and the things she wanted. She was truly a strong, independent, yet loyal character and the reader sincerely loved her. The other characters were just as dynamic and quite memorable. Arden did a really good job of not only creating characters we wanted to root for, but characters we hated too. There were a few who just really grinded the reader’s gears; we didn’t want to see them, but they inevitably played a major role to the overall story. The character growth that they all went through, well most of them, was well done because a lot of growing up happened in this book and it left us craving to see how this series is going to continue. In the end, this novel was stunning, it had amazing writing with strong characters and layered plots that told a rich and beautiful story.