Wednesday 9 May 2018

Audiobook: The Bear and the Nightingale

The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy, #1)

The Bear and the Nightingale is written by Katherine Arden and narrated by Kathleen Gati and is the first book of the Winternight trilogy.

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind--she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed--this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

The Breakdown:
1. So this book has a lot of critical acclaim, and I kind of have a love of Russian based or Russian influenced books.  I was disappointed with the book in general.  I book is very slow in building the story.   Plus, I listening on audiobook, I was not impressed with Gati as the narrator.   I found her reading when not doing the characters speaking to be very monotone.

2.  I found the character of Vasilisa to be a little meh.  I had no strong feelings for her either way.  I liked her the most with her interactions with the Winter King.

3. The thing I liked the best about this book is the household spirits and old gods, and the struggle between them and encroaching Christianity into the lives of the people.  I find the old traditions fascinating and the idea that things are lost when a new religion stamps them out.

4. I did enjoy the Winter King the most as a character.  I found him interesting and wished that he was in more of the book.  I especially liked his strange relationship with his horse, and how she seemed to part adviser to him.

5. In the end, I found the book overall boring.  I could not bring myself to really care about the characters and their fates.  I am not even bothering with the rest of the trilogy.

To Read or Not to Read:
Skip this one.

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