(Caveat: I read this a couple months back, so some of the details are going to be woefully wrong—like I can’t remember for sure if the rulers are tsars, but I think they are.)
Rating: 4.5 stars, maybe 5
Clean rating:
PG-13, largely for thematic elements (it’s a harsh sort of life, there are demons and other evil beings, there’s a forced marriage in which the woman worries quite a bit over where the sex life is going to go, etc.). I didn’t find it unreasonable or gratuitous.
Overview:
This book is an awesome, complex tale loosely based on Rumpelstiltskin, with nods to a number of other fairy tales (I caught Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, a couple others that seemed like maybes). It’s set in an Eastern European feeling world.
The story follows three women in very different situations, starting first with Miryem, the daughter of a Jewish moneylender, dealing with a lot of the real prejudices a Jewish moneylender would have faced in this kind of a world. Next is Wanda, a poor daughter of an abusive and drunken father. Finally is Irina, a rich noble who, despite her better economic situation, has very little control over her life, just like the others. Their stories start separate but interweave until they all work together.
What I liked:
This story was exactly my cup of tea. The characters are highly flawed in a lot of ways, including being sometimes downright unlikable—but they’re all in untenable situations and doing the best they can. I loved the writing. I loved the nods to fairy tales but how much richness was added to the narrative beyond the basics of a fairy tale. I liked the worldbuilding with strange fae-like characters (called the Staryk) whose motivations seem incomprehensible but maybe aren’t really, once you get down to the details.
Plus, no spoiler here, but I thought the very ending (we're talking about the last couple paragraphs) was spot-on perfect. Love love loved it. I think the story may have earned an extra half a star from me for that alone. It’s certainly what left me smiling goofily and telling my husband all about it after I finished.
What I didn’t like:
I’m sure there was something here, but it fades. I don’t really think the story was perfect, but I enjoyed so much and felt like it all came together—even the things I didn’t like about it as I was reading it came together in a way that I felt satisfied with. I will say that as I was going, I was not convinced the author would resolve the romantic storylines in ways I felt good about, given that so many of the characters were selfish, incomprehensible, or sometimes downright evil. And I’m sure that those resolutions didn’t work for many readers—but for me, they did.
Other notes:
In looking at other people’s reviews of the book, I began to consider the POV issue. This book is written from three main POV characters, but then there are another 2-4 minor POV characters thrown in as well. I didn’t have a difficult time figuring out who was speaking, though some readers complained about that. But I do think some of the POVs seemed unnecessary, and I didn’t love having them jump in just when I’d gotten used to how many POV characters we had. So if you have difficulties with multiple narrators, this is likely to be distracting and unpleasant to you.
Final thoughts:
I enjoyed it. I know not everyone did, but I thought it was a wonderful book and if the POV thing and some sometimes-unlikable characters don’t throw you off, and if you love fairy tale retellings, you should read it. The end.
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