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enyltiak's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
What an incredible, wonderful book. Stories about houses, about hauntings, about stories themselves, will always draw me in and delight me. I can't express the love I have for this story. I'd rate it six stars if I could, if not more. Utter perfection, falling somewhere between the cozy epic-ness of Six of Crows and the comforting gothic of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It's a book about folk tales and magic and siblings and ghosts and memory, told from the perspective of the house in which the characters reside. I cannot recommend it enough. An instant new favorite.
Graphic: Grief, Hate crime, War, Genocide, Xenophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Antisemitism, Child death, Death, and Violence
lancemama's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Death of parent, Abandonment, Child death, Death, Religious bigotry, Antisemitism, Colonisation, Grief, War, Xenophobia, Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Racism, Violence, Hate crime, and Murder
ominousspectre's review against another edition
1.5
Themes: heavy handed
I very much wanted to like this. If you showed the blurb to any of my friends, they'd immediately be like oh! This is so on brand for you, almost to a way that's borderline spooky. However, I hated the execution of this.
It's unfortunate because this is a very personal story to her as one side of her family is Jewish Ukrainian. She helps run the Lore podcast. Clearly she's done her research. There are good pieces in here (I loved the line from the villain that said, "I am not a what, I'm a when). But overall, I have a lot of issues with it.
The Longshadow man isn't even really an allegory for bigotry/white supremacy, because he just walks up to people and says alt right talking points at them for a few minutes until they commit a hate crime. I'm not kidding. It's very on the nose. Though the pipeline moves fast, it doesn't work THAT fast, so those scenes felt disingenuous.
What irked me the most was Baba Yaga reimagined as a Jewish Ukrainian in 1919. Nothing inherently wrong with that, I love folklore retellings or generally inspired things. But the connection of Baba Yaga basically stops at the name. She's just a woman who is sort of made fun of in town and given that nickname, and she then
Nothing inherently wrong with that either, but otherwise, there's no tie in to any of the actual themes of Baba Yaga the original myth. I was expecting some sort of reclamation of the name and how she's a social outcast, a villain arc, SOMETHING, but there's nothing there.
Weirder still is that it's then just a strange naming convention. I get that she never went by her real name, but you're telling me the only surname she passed on was Yaga???? If you're not familiar with Ukrainian naming conventions, this would make her kids stand out like a sore thumb.
Baba obviously means grandmother or more derogatorily, a hag
Yaga has no true consensus on what it means, but historians believe it comes from different possible Old Slavonic descriptors that are all again derogatory in nature. It's like giving your kids the possible surnames of Witch, Anger, Horror, or Disease. Like those are the possibilities they've come up with for what Yaga means.
I would've even accepted if we didn't know her name from the start, and it was revealed as the story went on as a sort of OH! That's why they inh rited the chicken leg house! But as with the rest of the themes, it must be heavy handed.
As a less serious aside: crazy how Isaac is a tit for tat self insert character I would've written in middle school. Not even kidding, younger me feels so called out. It's honestly very funny
Graphic: Antisemitism, Racism, and Hate crime
caebrown's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Murder, Child death, Self harm, Antisemitism, Death, Genocide, Animal death, Violence, and Hate crime
loscamp4lyf's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Moderate: Violence, Xenophobia, Hate crime, Genocide, and Antisemitism
Minor: Self harm
tiernanhunter's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Violence, Alcohol, Antisemitism, Death, Deportation, Genocide, Xenophobia, Blood, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Vomit, and War
liv_easton's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.75
In either case, halfway through the story was a bit long to finally drop the curtain on what we needed to know about magic in the novel. Couple that with a POV that is often unappealing to read and also refuses to give the reader any information for a couple hundred pages (I'm looking mostly at you, Isaac, but occasionally at Bellatine), and I didn't think that this book would ever become a novel I was actually invested in. However, I'm happy to say that I was wrong on that count—once Bellatine's magic was revealed, the story and characters seemed to open up and get me invested in the story enough that I would have given the story a 3.5 stars (the last .25 coming from my affection for the type of ending the story ends up having).
The major highlight that kept me reading was every chapter the house told, as the house was by far and away the most compelling character and also the best storyteller of the lot by far. On the whole, I think this is a super worthwhile book to read, and if you need to skim some of the first 20 or so chapters to get through it, I get it.
Graphic: Abandonment, Grief, Animal death, Genocide, Antisemitism, Death, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Hate crime, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Blood
imds's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
3.5
Graphic: Blood, Gun violence, Police brutality, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, Child death, Hate crime, Murder, Abandonment, Body horror, Grief, Death, Violence, and Antisemitism
vagrantheather's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The prose is really nice and the audiobook narrator (January LaVoy) did a lovely job. I liked the Yaga family characters, Winifred, Benji - but was not big on the adjacent bus crew. They lacked substance.
The main themes - the enduring legacy of cultures in the stories of descendents, the destructive power of fear, multigenerational trauma - were powerful.
Moderate: Child death, Hate crime, Xenophobia, and Antisemitism
Minor: Death and Fire/Fire injury
readwriterobyn's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Self harm, Hate crime, Religious bigotry, Suicide, Violence, Grief, Antisemitism, Child death, Death, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, and Murder