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texassizedreads's review
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism
Moderate: Confinement, Grief, Hate crime, Homophobia, Rape, and Genocide
shitbookreviews's review against another edition
Copy via Netgalley.
I really struggled with this one. It sounded wildly interesting:
✨ Historical fiction
✨ Jewish folklore (which is very, very rare in books)
✨ Magic
And I should have been hooked, but if I'm being honest with myself, I really didn't want to pick it back up.
This is the story of three sisters: Hannah, Sarah, and Levana. Each with their own magic abilities which leads to someone dinging the witchcraft bell and sending the village into a tizzy. Fleeing from their lives, they need to leave behind everything they know including some of their culture.
Ok so things I found really, really interesting:
⚫ Judaism actually being represented in a book. I am not religious but I love learning about them and let me tell you - you will learn A LOT.
⚫ The characters are insanely well developed and I can see them floating around in my noggin.
However, this was a very heavy book. Trigger warnings everywhere (anti-Semitism, violent deaths, rape & sexism.) and perhaps it was just a little too much for me to handle. I am also one with a simple brain - this book comes at you from three different POVs so I was thrown off very easily and constantly found myself lost.
And lastly, there's a lot to take in. As I mentioned before, learning about Judaism was amazing but it became overwhelming to the point where I had to stop and Google what things meant. It became a bit like homework.
Would I recommend this book to someone with an excellent attention span? Yes, absolutely.
Would I recommend it to someone after Jewish representation in a fantasy book? Of course!
Would I try to read it again? Probably not.
I really struggled with this one. It sounded wildly interesting:
✨ Historical fiction
✨ Jewish folklore (which is very, very rare in books)
✨ Magic
And I should have been hooked, but if I'm being honest with myself, I really didn't want to pick it back up.
This is the story of three sisters: Hannah, Sarah, and Levana. Each with their own magic abilities which leads to someone dinging the witchcraft bell and sending the village into a tizzy. Fleeing from their lives, they need to leave behind everything they know including some of their culture.
Ok so things I found really, really interesting:
⚫ Judaism actually being represented in a book. I am not religious but I love learning about them and let me tell you - you will learn A LOT.
⚫ The characters are insanely well developed and I can see them floating around in my noggin.
However, this was a very heavy book. Trigger warnings everywhere (anti-Semitism, violent deaths, rape & sexism.) and perhaps it was just a little too much for me to handle. I am also one with a simple brain - this book comes at you from three different POVs so I was thrown off very easily and constantly found myself lost.
And lastly, there's a lot to take in. As I mentioned before, learning about Judaism was amazing but it became overwhelming to the point where I had to stop and Google what things meant. It became a bit like homework.
Would I recommend this book to someone with an excellent attention span? Yes, absolutely.
Would I recommend it to someone after Jewish representation in a fantasy book? Of course!
Would I try to read it again? Probably not.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Death, Rape, and Sexism
Moderate: Homophobia
Minor: Misogyny
ninegladiolus's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Sometimes, you have such astounding hopes for a book and they fall flat on their face. Unfortunately, that’s what happened with me and Rena Rossner’s The Light of the Midnight Stars.
The novel follows the tales of three Jewish sisters who each have their own specific type of magic: Hannah, Sarah, and Levana. Raised in the forested village of Trnava by their respected rabbi father, a violent and traumatic tragedy forces the family to flee the village and start a new life away from their heritage and traditions.
There are definitely elements I loved about this novel. The way Rossner weaves Jewish folklore and history into each one of the POV characters shows the love, care, and research she put into crafting this story. It truly was a story inextricably shaped by Jewish experiences to a degree I haven’t seen in a fantasy novel before, filling a dire gap in speculative fiction. I won’t personally speak to the quality of the representation within, but there are Jewish reviewers who have spoken on this and I would encourage you to seek out their reviews! In addition, the prose in many places was quite beautiful; this definitely got a fair number of highlights for poignant turns of phrase.
The main thing that didn’t work for me about this novel was that it tried to do WAY too much with the space it had. With three POVs (one of which was rendered in verse for a large portion of the novel), lots of interjected side stories, a complete shift in names and language at the turning point of the book, and each sister’s character arc going in vastly different directions after said turning point, a plethora of historical information mixed with magical elements… there just wasn’t enough space to accomplish the ambitious goals this novel had. A side effect of this is that I felt like I never got to really know Hannah, Sarah, and Levana as characters; so much of their chapters, in addition to jumping around right as many of them hit a stride, felt almost allegorical in nature instead of like three dimensional characters. As such, this made many of the emotional beats of the novel miss the mark for me.
I also feel it’s important to warn readers, particularly Jewish readers, that there is a LOT a antisemitic violence and trauma in this novel—far more than I was expecting, and with very little comfort by the end. This is representative of historical events, particularly in the 1500s, but if you aren’t in a place to handle detailed depictions of antisemitic violence, please give this one a pass until such a time as you are. On top of that, this was compounded for me by the other content warnings listed at the end of this review. From the synopsis and marketing, I was expecting a much lighter and fantastical tale, and I definitely wasn’t in the head space for this read.
This is a relatively minor note in comparison, but one of the reasons I picked this up was because I understood there to be a sapphic relationship within. While one of the sisters is LGBTQIA+ (I would say bisexual if the term existed in the 1500s), her relationship with what I would term a genderqueer character does not get a lot of focus AT all and it’s definitely not a romance as far as mood or genre considerations. Another note for readers who might have been interested for the same reasons.
Overall, this just wasn’t the book for me, as much as I wanted to love it. I still plan on checking out The Sisters of the Winter Wood at some point because I can absolutely see the skill and care Rossner brings to her craft. As long as you’re in the space to deal with the content warnings provided, I’d still recommend this to readers looking for a standalone fantasy book with a powerful foundation of Jewish history and folklore.
Thank you to Orbit for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
CW: extreme antisemitism, extreme misogyny, rape, graphic depictions of violence, religious bigotry, murder, infanticide, confinement, and sexual relations between minors and adults.
The novel follows the tales of three Jewish sisters who each have their own specific type of magic: Hannah, Sarah, and Levana. Raised in the forested village of Trnava by their respected rabbi father, a violent and traumatic tragedy forces the family to flee the village and start a new life away from their heritage and traditions.
There are definitely elements I loved about this novel. The way Rossner weaves Jewish folklore and history into each one of the POV characters shows the love, care, and research she put into crafting this story. It truly was a story inextricably shaped by Jewish experiences to a degree I haven’t seen in a fantasy novel before, filling a dire gap in speculative fiction. I won’t personally speak to the quality of the representation within, but there are Jewish reviewers who have spoken on this and I would encourage you to seek out their reviews! In addition, the prose in many places was quite beautiful; this definitely got a fair number of highlights for poignant turns of phrase.
The main thing that didn’t work for me about this novel was that it tried to do WAY too much with the space it had. With three POVs (one of which was rendered in verse for a large portion of the novel), lots of interjected side stories, a complete shift in names and language at the turning point of the book, and each sister’s character arc going in vastly different directions after said turning point, a plethora of historical information mixed with magical elements… there just wasn’t enough space to accomplish the ambitious goals this novel had. A side effect of this is that I felt like I never got to really know Hannah, Sarah, and Levana as characters; so much of their chapters, in addition to jumping around right as many of them hit a stride, felt almost allegorical in nature instead of like three dimensional characters. As such, this made many of the emotional beats of the novel miss the mark for me.
I also feel it’s important to warn readers, particularly Jewish readers, that there is a LOT a antisemitic violence and trauma in this novel—far more than I was expecting, and with very little comfort by the end. This is representative of historical events, particularly in the 1500s, but if you aren’t in a place to handle detailed depictions of antisemitic violence, please give this one a pass until such a time as you are. On top of that, this was compounded for me by the other content warnings listed at the end of this review. From the synopsis and marketing, I was expecting a much lighter and fantastical tale, and I definitely wasn’t in the head space for this read.
This is a relatively minor note in comparison, but one of the reasons I picked this up was because I understood there to be a sapphic relationship within. While one of the sisters is LGBTQIA+ (I would say bisexual if the term existed in the 1500s), her relationship with what I would term a genderqueer character does not get a lot of focus AT all and it’s definitely not a romance as far as mood or genre considerations. Another note for readers who might have been interested for the same reasons.
Overall, this just wasn’t the book for me, as much as I wanted to love it. I still plan on checking out The Sisters of the Winter Wood at some point because I can absolutely see the skill and care Rossner brings to her craft. As long as you’re in the space to deal with the content warnings provided, I’d still recommend this to readers looking for a standalone fantasy book with a powerful foundation of Jewish history and folklore.
Thank you to Orbit for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
CW: extreme antisemitism, extreme misogyny, rape, graphic depictions of violence, religious bigotry, murder, infanticide, confinement, and sexual relations between minors and adults.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Death, Homophobia, Murder, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Rape
allisonwonderlandreads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
2.0
In an amalgamation of folklore, fairy tale, and myth, this historical fantasy follows a Jewish family with three daughters in 14th century Eastern Europe. In their early teens, the girls experiences tragedy after tragedy rooted in religious persecution.
First of all, I think several content warnings are necessary here, and there may be more: anti-Semitism, violent deaths, rape, death of a spouse, forced migration, stigma/discrimination against LGBT characters, sexism.
This is a story full of trauma, but not as a descriptive emotional delve with our characters. Something that bothered me about this story was that its strength also became a weakness. In matching the lilting, twisting tone of the parent material with impressive finesse, the story lost opportunities for personal connection and strong characterization. The sisters definitely read like flat folk tale denizens, imparting lessons through their struggles without being encumbered by multiple dimensions. This isn't my personal preference as a reader, and I took issue with it most when trauma became an overwhelming deluge with no respite or reflection. The new griefs just pile on. I think relationships in the story fall into the same traps. They are static, predictably depressing, and fulfill plot functions rather than adding the spark of humanity that touches me most in an excellent book.
In addition, the three daughters are young teenagers but experience a slew of adult situations. While I think this is historically accurate, I can't shake my own alarm at reading about young girls with partially developed brains getting married, making major decisions about their own and others' emotional well-being, or trapped in unalterable life circumstances. As someone who teaches students of that age, reading the not infrequent reminders of their youth set me on edge.
Ultimately, I think this book did a good job of taking on a complex and storied genre in terms of writing style. I also think stories of religious persecution are important and powerful. On a personal level, I must confront the fact that I found this reading experience frustrating and unfulfilling. A reader with different tastes and perspectives may find a more positive result.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism
Moderate: Rape, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Murder, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual assault, and Violence
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