The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

I especially loved the interactions with the traditional fairy-tale creatures. Vasya is a strong female lead, and I rooted for her until the very end. I grew to like them and understood why they made their decisions later on in the story.

This gave me an opportunity to get know the characters. It starts from the very beginning - before Vasya was born - as typical fairy stories do. It took me more than three attempts before I managed to get past the first couple of chapters. It starts off slow however, and even a little boring. It feels (to me at least) like a newly-discovered Russian folk tale, with bits of various old Russian and Slavic mythologies masterfully weaved through. That being said and out of the way, The Bear and the Nightingale is a wonderful tale. It's not a big deal and does not affect the main story at all, but I just wanted to correct that for some reason. It was Dunya who kept the necklace from Vasya, sorrowfully giving it to her when the time was right. Both Dunya and Pyotr knew that it was no ordinary trinket, and that the stranger was no ordinary man, and were afraid. Pyotr did not hide it from her - he gave it to Dunya, their housekeeper and the children's carer, for her to give to Vasya. Vasya was already a wild, willful young girl when the blue-eyed stranger gave her father the necklace. I am doing this mostly because that publisher's summary above is not quite right and it annoyed me a bit. This, I think, is my first full review despite having listened to and loved a number of stories here in audible.

But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that, armed only with the necklace, she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.Ītmospheric and enchanting, with an engrossing adventure at its core, The Bear and the Nightingale is perfect for fans of Naomi Novik's Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and Neil Gaiman. Uncertain of its meaning, the father hides the gift away, and his daughter, Vasya, grows up a wild, willful girl, to the chagrin of her family. In a village at the edge of the wilderness of Northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain, intended for his young daughter. Random House presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, read by Kathleen Gati.Ī young woman's family is threatened by forces both real and fantastical in this debut novel inspired by Russian fairy tales.