I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing.

[the voice of “God” was the Bear (hide spoiler)

The treatment of Anna Ivanovna:

The fairy-tale used to set up the book:

Some miscellaneous minor things that bugged me:

[Before the end, you will pluck snowdrops at midwinter, die by your own choosing, and weep for a nightingale. (hide spoiler)

[Vasya does choose to die even if unsuccessfully (hide spoiler)

Saving the world is always hard. It can be a challenge even when you have loyal friends and numerous supporters on your side.When your entire community casts you out and punishes you for doing the right thing. When they not only make your work harder, but give you scorn instead of gratitude.It can be frustrating, and you want to grab these people, shake them and scream into their faces. But that’s how it is, and Vasya makes the best out of it, and more!The story is somewhat inspired by the Russian folktales of Vasilisa the Beautiful and the strange creatures and spirits she encounters on her adventures:It’s not a straight-up retelling of any particular fairy-tale (at least as far as I remember – it’s been a while since I’ve read them.) Still,. The book is extremely easy to get into. I first started it on the train, after a sleepless night and a particularly taxing flight, when I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate on a new book with new characters. And yet, it pulled me right in.The book transports us to the Middle Ages, into the vast wilderness of northern Rus’ (to become Russia a few centuries later.) Although people have accepted Christianity, they still respect the old ways and leave offerings to the multitudes of spirits who live around – a spirit of the house, of the stables, of the woods, the rusalka in the lake, etc.It’s fascinating how the two react to their abilities in vastly different ways. While Vasya talks to the spirits and befriends them, Anna is terrified. She calls them ‘demons’ and ‘devils’ and seeks to escape them in the church. Although she plays the role of the evil stepmother, I had a lot of sympathy for her, but I’ll get to that later.Vasya is surrounded by a loving (though not always understanding) family – her father, Pyotr, a sister, a stepsister, and a horde of protective brothers. Another notable character is the nursemaid, Dunya, who is like a mother to Vasya and who teaches her much of the old lore. Pyotr is a decent man with ultimately good intentions, but he makes a series of stupid decision in the name of protecting his children, which leads him to absolute disaster. In fact, all of Vasya’s family always stay in her way.The status quo is shattered when a new priest, Konstantin, arrives in the village. He preaches that people should fear God and abandon the old ways. The villagers stop giving offering, and the spirits-protectors grow weak. At the same time, the big bad, the Bear, is about to awake, and there’s no one to protect the people. Vasya tries to keep the spirits alive, but it is hard work on her own, and the villagers soon label her a witch and blame her for all their misfortunes, which are, in fact, a result of them neglecting the spirits.Konstantin is charismatic and good-looking and everyone adores him and listens to him. But he can’t get Vasya to behave, and this drives him crazy. He grows creepily obsessed with her, and feels guilty about it, which only feeds his love-hate. Often, when I was reading about him, the song “Hellfire” from Disney’swas playing inside my head because the situation was very much the same. The only difference is that Vasya is more innocent than Esmeralda and has no idea what Konstantin is thinking, which makes everything even more disturbing.The rusalka (lake spirit) offers to eat him on two occasions, and, to my deepest regret, Vasya stops her. She’s obviously a better person than I am. Okay, I realize letting a spirit eat a human might be a wrong message to give in a children’s / YA book, but it would have saved so many lives and avoided so much suffering. I probably sound like a monster, but I challenge you to read this book and then come back and tell me you don’t want the rusalka to eat Konstantin!On top of being a creep, Konstantin is too dumb to live. I realized (view spoiler) from the first moment it sounded, and yet he kept listening to it and making a bigger and a bigger mess. At one point, he realizes he’s made a mistake and tries to fix it, by causing an even greater disaster. It was somewhat darkly amusing to watch.Oh, and speaking of darkly amusing, it was kind of funny how the Metropolitan uses Pyotr’s lands and family as a garbage collection point for all the undesirables, who could cause problems to the Grand Prince. Pyotr’s family is the solution to everything. Some cousin can threaten the Prince’s son’s rule? Easy – marry him off to Pyotr’s daughter! The Prince’s daughter is mad and might embarrass him? Marry her off to Pyotr! Konstantin is too charismatic and might challenge the Prince? Send him off to Pyotr’s lands! Yeah, at one point I had to wonder if there are no other noblemen in the wilderness...Vasya’s interactions with the spirits, her need to challenge her family at every step, the rising sense of dread – it was all amazing! All the prophecies, the evils starting to come one by one, and then you see the inevitable end but there is nothing you can do.All the locations, from a busy city to a wild, imposing forest, are described so well they capture your imagination.Just look at Vasya’s journey to the winter king’s dwelling. At the end of the world, at the back of the north wind. A house that is a fir growth but also a house, and you see both at the same time, and it makes you dizzy unless you will yourself to see only one. And the horse that is also a nightingale!Of course, nothing can be perfect, and I do have. Still, they are more of. Let’s get these out of the way:Anna plays the role of the evil stepmother, but it’s worth noting how she ended up there. She is raised to be a good Christian woman, but she is the only one in her community cursed with seeing the spirits, and everyone thinks she is mad and ridicules her. It is understandable that she is scared and questioning her sanity, but no one, not even the supposedly good characters, show her any kind of kindness.The way Konstantin treats her is completely horrendous. At one point she tells him she just wants him to see her, and he replies “I see you, but there is not much to see.” Anna is exactly the type of woman he and others like him preach women should be like. And when she behaves exactly in the way he asks of her, he scorns her for it. He tells women how they should act, and when they disobey, like Vasya, he labels them demons, when they obey, like Anna, he scorns them and thinks of them as boring and disposable. Did I mention I want the rusalka to eat him?The thing is, it’s not just Konstantin who treats her like this. Not a single character has any sympathy for her, and, at points, the narrative itself seems to demonize her, and this bothered me. I mean, it’s great Vasya reacted so well to seeing spirits no one else could, but I think it’s understandable if other people would react differently. I find it sad how Anna and Vasya shared a gift, but, instead of bringing them closer together, it drew them apart.Also, it bothered me how she was always referred to as old, with mentions of white hair and gaps between her teeth. How old is she, exactly? When she marries Pyotr, she’s said to be barely older than Vasya’s older sister, Olga, who is 14 at the time. So let’s say that Anna is 16 then, or, let’s be generous, 18. At the wedding, I believe Vasya is 7 or possibly even older. When the main events take place, Vasya is 14. Which means Anna is at most 25, quite possibly even younger.Guys, 25! I understand it’s the Middle Ages and people lived shorter lives, but that’s pushing it. The main reason why the average lifespan at the time was very low was the high child mortality. It’s not like people dropped dead at 30. In fact, if they survived childhood and didn’t catch any infectious diseases, they could survive well into old age. And it’s most definitely not the case that people were aging to match the average lifespan, so the 25 of the time is today’s 70.In the very first scene in this book, we see Vasya’s family years before she is born. The nursemaid, Dunya, tells the children a bedtime story about the frost-demon, Morozko. The tale goes as follows:A good girl, Marfa, has an evil stepmother and a lazy stepsister, Liza. Her stepmother hates her and suggest to her husband they should wed her to the frost-demon, Morozko (which essentially means they leave her in a cold to die.) They send her to the woods, and Morozko comes, bringing cold winds with him.He asks Marfa if she’s cold, and, of course, she’s freezing. But she is “a well-brought-up girl who bore her troubles uncomplainingly,” and so she tells him she’s fine. He makes it colder and colder and repeatedly asks her how she’s doing, and she repeatedly answers that all is well. Morozko is impressed and sends her back with a prince’s ransom.The stepmother is jealous and sends Liza to Morozko, hoping she’ll return with a treasure as well. Morozko asks her if she’s cold, and she says she is. He asks her repeatedly, and she always answers that she’s freezing. He kills her. The end.It’s not the author’s fault, of course, it’s folklore, but I’m not sure the tale was a right choice as it didn’t really fit with the rest of the book.The reason the story annoyed me is that. So many girls and women have been brought up to ignore their own needs and to suffer in silence. I could relate to this tale in a weirdly literal way. Outside of writing, I work in a very male-dominated field. I’m the only woman in a team of 10, and we sit in a big open office, where the team sitting next to us is 100% male. Due to dress code, the guys are always wearing more clothes than the weather suggests and are complaining about how hot it is. This often results in open windows in the middle of winter, and I cannot possibly count all the times I’ve been freezing but kept quiet so I wouldn’t inconvenience the others. And I was really annoyed at myself for it.When I read this tale, I kept thinking, it’s Liza who did the braver thing. It’s Liza who did the harder thing.The story might set up the ambience, but not the overall tone of the book. How does Vasya fit in? She is anything“a well-brought-up girl” – everyone who meets her mentions it at every opportunity! I kept waiting for the tale to be subverted in some way. Morozko is an actual character in the book later on, and I kept waiting for him to say that’s not what actually happened. Yet, he made a mention of the old tales and how the braver maidens sometimes survived him, and he seemed to confirm it.- The prophecy. Vasya receives a warning: (view spoiler) The last part never happened. It made me expect (view spoiler) , and I’m soooo happy it never came to pass, but then I wonder why it was there. Perhaps it’s coming up in the sequel? To be fair, the second part of the prophecy also hasn’t happened yet (thankfully!) although (view spoiler) - We keep hearing how Morozko is a trickster and shouldn’t be trusted, but we don’t see him trick anyone, and his agenda is pretty clear and straightforward from the beginning. Speaking of, why is Dunya freaking out so much about giving Vasya the talisman? Morozko doesn’t want her to join his army; he just wants to protect her. So much trouble could have been spared with some communication skills!- The Bear backstory was a bit underwhelming. I’m hoping Morozko was withholding information from Vasya, as he initially planned, and we’ll hear more of it in following books, but we were made to expect some epic tale of magic and got something simple and superficial. Still hoping there’s more to it.- The title seems to have been chosen to sound magical and whimsical, but I don’t think it’s really fitting. The Nightingale is not central to the story and the Bear and the Nightingale are not the two main opposing forces.The characters are layered and seem real, even when you hate them. It’s so frustrating to think about how easier everything would have been if people had listened to Vasya and taken her serious, and, sadly, this applies to many real life situations.Some of the main plot points might seem derivative at a first glance – a tomboy girl, struggling with gender roles, the old gods weakening when people stop believing in them – we’ve seen these before. Still, it worked really well, and I loved it that the “girly girls,” Olga and Irina, weren’t demonized to make Vasya look better. They were great characters in their own right, and Vasya didn’t envy them or despise them, but loved them as they loved her, which all seemed very natural.Overall,. In many fantasy books, we see a hodgepodge of mythology creatures, with no explanation of how they coexist and interact. Here, perhaps because the book is based on a set of specific folk tales, it all fit together really well.I should confess I now have a bit of a crush on Morozko. I know, a frost-demon, what could possibly go wrong? Vasya seems to be on the same boat though in her case it’s possible she’s more in love with the idea of magic and the old world, and the sense of freedom he represents. Curious to see where this goes!I’m looking forward to the sequel and will be especially happy if we get a graphic scene of the rusalka eating a certain priest :D["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>