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The Bear and The Nightingale 9781785035234 Books

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The Bear and The Nightingale 9781785035234 Books

Let me put this within a context that might resonate better. So, imagine if I opined that all Muslims are terrorists and that anyone who isn't heterosexual is evil and less deserving of compassion and love. How fast would it take you to flag this review?
This book went from a story premised on Russian folklore to one that not only degrades Christians, but it also characterizes them as duplicitous and malevolent.

Look, real-life comprises layers and nuances and not one group is completely good or bad, but to malign, for instance, an entire race because of prejudice and/or ignorance is not acceptable to me; not unless such is required to advance the story. And quite frankly, I don't believe that Arden adequately justifies this plot device; which makes it seem like a self-indulgent, deliberate, and malicious subversion of Orthodox Christianity.

In the end, and by juxtaposing mysticism with Orthodoxy in a "good v bad" battle (with Christianity being all bad), Arden allowed her personal bias and prejudice interfere with the organic flow of what could have been a rather enthralling read. And I couldn't help but wonder if she would have dared insinuate this sort of drivel about the Ottoman Empire, or Islam for that matter.


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The Bear and The Nightingale 9781785035234 Books Reviews

I think I was misled by many of the reviews and reviewers here.

The book started off relatively strong, with a strong dose of seeming historical realism and a touch of magic realism and elements of Russian folk lore.

However, as the novel progressed it became more cliched, following a standard "young adult" template, in my opinion.

This is definitely "chick lit" (I know this term can be offensive, but I believe it's true and applicable, in this case. I suspect the overwhelming number of readers and reviewers here are female). Morozko, who starts out as a mysterious elemental force, becomes, by the end, a kind of young adult female fantasy figure--a kind of combination Mr. Rochester, Heathcliff, and distant but attractive generic "bad boy"--and at the very end, even a kind of banal "Laurel and Hardy" partner in crime.

Vasya's time in Morozko's "house" has a "Nutcracker"-ish flavor to me--the young girl's fantasy of the "snow prince." Again, a very "chick lit"-ish trope.

The final climax was anticlimactic for me, and the final emotions, words, and actions seemed not fully earned to me, and sometimes devolved into pulp fiction cliches.

I wished for more and I wished for better, at the end. Probably won't proceed to the second book.

P.S. And if one more character spoke with "asperity," I was planning to rip that word out of my dictionary. And if Morozko "raised his eyebrow" one more time, I was going to send him to a waxing salon.
This is the second retelling of the Russian fairy tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful” to appear in recent months. The other one, Sarah Porter’s Vassa in the Night, sticks much closer to the original story, even though it is set in modern Brooklyn (where witch Baba Yaga runs a convenience store chain). This one, although it retains the overall feeling of a fairy tale, doesn’t follow the specific plot of the Vasilisa tale very much. On the other hand, it makes real the environment in which the original tale probably developed Medieval (1300s) Russia, especially its heavily forested, bitterly cold northern portion. I learned interesting details of the way people coped with that environment, such as sleeping on top of the big family oven to stay warm.

There are two main conflicts in the story. One is between two brothers, both spirits of Winter and Death, but one relatively benign and the other essentially evil. The other, which I found the more interesting of the two, was the conflict between the traditional pagan beliefs of the Northern people, featuring different spirits that guard homes, horses, forest, and more, and the relatively new and monotheistic Christianity, here presented (in the form of charismatic priest Father Konstantin) as primarily a religion of fear. The contrast is vividly presented in the difference between Vasya (Vasilisa) and her stepmother, Anna Ivanovna, the only two characters who can see the spirits Vasya finds most of them friendly and treats them with kindness and respect, but to Anna, obsessed with the new religion, they are all demons.

The story focuses on Vasya’s learning how to deal with both of these conflicts and their consequences as she grows to maturity, but it also develops a third, somewhat less obvious conflict between Vasya’s independent personality, as free and nature-oriented as those of the spirits she befriends, and the very limited range of roles and behavior considered acceptable for women of her time and place, even those who, like herself, belong to a basically loving and relatively well-to-do family. She earns her fairy-tale ending, but I wondered what she would have done if she had not had magic to help her.
Let me put this within a context that might resonate better. So, imagine if I opined that all Muslims are terrorists and that anyone who isn't heterosexual is evil and less deserving of compassion and love. How fast would it take you to flag this review?
This book went from a story premised on Russian folklore to one that not only degrades Christians, but it also characterizes them as duplicitous and malevolent.

Look, real-life comprises layers and nuances and not one group is completely good or bad, but to malign, for instance, an entire race because of prejudice and/or ignorance is not acceptable to me; not unless such is required to advance the story. And quite frankly, I don't believe that Arden adequately justifies this plot device; which makes it seem like a self-indulgent, deliberate, and malicious subversion of Orthodox Christianity.

In the end, and by juxtaposing mysticism with Orthodoxy in a "good v bad" battle (with Christianity being all bad), Arden allowed her personal bias and prejudice interfere with the organic flow of what could have been a rather enthralling read. And I couldn't help but wonder if she would have dared insinuate this sort of drivel about the Ottoman Empire, or Islam for that matter.