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4.02 AVERAGE


This is my first dip into 'WEIRD' literature and I must say, I don't even know what to say or how to feel after reading this. I thought I had my rating but now I really don't know. Like this book sparked an existential crisis for me and then just like left me hanging high and dry if that makes sense. So, I will try my best to convey my thoughts logically, if that's even possible.

Firstly, I am absolutely eager to read more Russian/Ukrainian literature. It was so atmospheric and I genuinely love the whole mood and tone of this book. I'd love to read more stuff like this even though I don't think I'll be picking up the sequel of this.

Secondly, I seem to not be the only one who felt wholly unintelligent reading this. Like I so appreciated what this book was trying to do (mostly, and I'll get to that). I am a huge fan of language and the complexities of it but I feel like SOOOO much of this book went STRAIGHT over my head.

Thirdly, I did not enjoy how isolated Sasha was as a character. One of my favourite things about reading is witnessing and dissecting character dynamics and how different characters experience life and each other. But in this book Sasha is SOOO isolated and concerned with herself and her own journey that you get NOTHING from the other characters. The person I feel we get the most from is one of her professors and even then it's really nothing. And to an extent it's done to add to the narrative and the sense of dread and loneliness but she doesn't seem bothered by it and she doesn't try to correct it. I am left to wonder if anyone else experienced what she experienced in this place because it seems to me (and to Sasha) like basically everyone else is doing perfectly fine with everything and then all of a sudden they've got problems. Like Sasha just IGNORES and doesn't care about her 'friends' and I would have liked more interaction or anything.

I don't know if I did myself a disservice while reading this book which ultimately lowered my enjoyment of this. Around 40% of the way, I really needed to take a break. I was enjoying it SO MUCH and having such a good time but I was also like all encompassed because I was thinking through everything that had happened and I was so confused and intrigued and actually, for the first time ever, didn't want to like run through this book. So I took a day break (and then unwillingly a second day break) before sitting down to finish the book and I enjoyed the last 60% of this book SIGNIFICANTLY less than the first 40% and I don't know if it was because of this break or if it was the shift in the tone and story.

Lastly (and please just let me speak freely here), I am a Christian and I am very skeptical when reading horror/weird books to keep myself away from strange things. I don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. And genuinely the entire time I read this book, I was having such a good confusing time, didn't pick up anything weird until like the last 5% of the book... Where all of a sudden there was "In the beginning there was..." and "Creator" and then finally "In the beginning was the Word." And I must be honest, it ruined the ENTIRE experience for me... Just thought I'd make a note of it because it did sour the whole book for me.

This book was dark, wholly original, and challenging. I would caution anyone from picking this up based on the comparisons to Harry Potter. I have tried to understand these comparisons and the only likeness I can find is a "magic" school, but I think it would be a disservice to refer to the concepts in this book as "magic." It's much, much deeper and way more complicated than that. Very nontraditional structure as well with absolutely no chapter breaks.
adventurous challenging emotional mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Read it, didn’t understand it. I was interested at first in where it was going but it didn’t come together in the end for me. Very repetitive in the middle but without the payoff for me at the end.
adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I stayed up until 2 am to finish this book. It's so engrossing, and I'm quite sad it's over. I've already started the second novel, and am sad it will eventually come to an end.

I have a tendency to get too wrapped up in a stories formula often bothered by predictability. When I'm enthralled, it's usually by beautiful and/or unique prose and character development. Vita Nostra is unlike anything I've read before.

It's dark, gritty, and delightfully weird. The Dyachenko's wove philosophy, magic, mysticism, psychology... At times it doesn't make sense, but I still found myself entranced in the mind-bending journey.

It's one of the most beautiful novels I've read this far. I've been obsessing over this book and can't recommend this book enough.

Just not my kind of book 
szaaa's profile picture

szaaa's review

4.0

now wtf did I just read

This is an amazing mixology of magical realism, language and metaphysics. A mysterious stranger coerces Sasha, a soon to be college student, into the Institute of Special Technologies. Upon arrival, she observes second year students walking in fits and starts, bumping into objects as if in a drunken stupor, and wearing gloves although winter is far away. Third year students look normal enough yet their gaze alone frightens her. The advisors, the mysterious stranger one of them, use subtle threats of harm to the student’s families should they fail.

Sasha along with the other students is torn between her curiosity and revulsion at what is asked of her. Sasha is homesick, away from home for the first time. Her mother is recently married and with the arrival of a new baby brother she wonders where she fits in this new family.
At the institute, Sasha befriends Kostya another first year student who has a secret that when discovered makes him an outcast. Of course, what would life be like without a roommate Lisa with whom Sasha has little in common and is her academic rival. Sasha navigates these new experiences, along with her classes: textbooks with strange characters that make no sense but alter her perception, a class on Applied Science that causes Sasha to sprout wings, and metaphysical discourses that somehow link them all together. As she progresses through her studies Sasha is shocked when her turbulent emotions manifest in unexpected and terrifying ways.

In the intervening mind-bending years, Sasha comes to embrace her studies perhaps too well; and even her professors are challenged to control Sasha’s potentially dangerous new abilities. In the final exam for placement, in the midst of professors and fellow students Sasha, achieves realization of who and what she really is in a single word. She sees the world as it truly exists; beautiful, exhilarating, and terrifying all at the same time.
A world that ultimately, she controls.
Are you curious yet?

I found Vita Nostra to be a highly compelling read that I could not put down. I needed to learn along with Sasha the secrets of The Institute of Special Technologies, her surreal metamorphosis, and the life altering conclusion.

I highly recommend Vita Nostra for fans of The Night Circus, The Magicians, Harry Potter, The Paper Magician and The Bear and the Nightingale.

Read it now! – Amy O.