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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
House of Frost and Feathers is a haunting, magical, and quietly powerful fantasy story that wraps Slavic folklore, slow burn friendship, and eerie winter vibes into one beautifully atmospheric book. This is a tale best enjoyed slowly, maybe with a warm drink, on a cold day because it reads like a snow dusted dream.
The story follows two very different but equally compelling girls: Marisha, desperate and grieving, and Olena, brilliant but guarded. Both end up in service to the mysterious and formidable witch Baba Zima, working together (somewhat reluctantly at first) to uncover the mystery behind a sleeping plague that strikes every ten years. I loved how their relationship evolved, from distant and distrustful to something resembling hard won loyalty and care. The emotional depth in their dynamic was easily one of my favorite parts.
The world itself was absolutely stunning. The walking house, the folkloric magic, the sense of creeping cold and ancient secrets is all so vivid. I’m a sucker for Slavic mythology, and while it took me a minute to separate this version of Baba Zima from the traditional Baba Yaga in my head, once I did, I really appreciated how Wiesebron carved out her own vision of this world.
That said, this is a slow read. Not in a bad way, but it just leans more on atmosphere, character, and vibes than action or romance (which is minimal and honestly could’ve been left out entirely). There were parts in the middle that dragged a bit for me, and the writing style sometimes got repetitive or overly descriptive. Still, there’s a quiet strength to the prose, and the payoff toward the end felt worth the build up. The ending left me wanting just a bit more but maybe that’s because I wasn’t ready to leave this world yet.
One thing worth noting: the book explores disability in a very central way, especially through Olena’s character. It’s clear the author wanted to dive into the complexities of how disability is seen and experienced in this world. While I appreciated the intention and the themes being addressed, there were definitely moments where the execution could’ve been more nuanced, especially in how Olena’s personality often felt entirely shaped by her trauma and appearance. I think there’s a powerful message at the core, but it didn’t always land as sensitively or fully realized as I hoped.
Still, for those who love a story rich in folklore, filled with prickly and strong willed characters, and rooted in themes of healing, secrecy, and strange magic, this book is absolutely worth a read. Think The Bear and the Nightingale meets Labyrinth with a touch of Naomi Novik’s dayt o day magical rhythms. It may not be for everyone, but if the idea of a snowy, eerie fairytale full of magic, mystery, and unlikely sisterhood speaks to you, then you’ll likely enjoy this one as much as I did.
Thank you to NetGalley, Lauren Wiesebron, and Avon Harper Voyager for the eARC of this book.
The story follows two very different but equally compelling girls: Marisha, desperate and grieving, and Olena, brilliant but guarded. Both end up in service to the mysterious and formidable witch Baba Zima, working together (somewhat reluctantly at first) to uncover the mystery behind a sleeping plague that strikes every ten years. I loved how their relationship evolved, from distant and distrustful to something resembling hard won loyalty and care. The emotional depth in their dynamic was easily one of my favorite parts.
The world itself was absolutely stunning. The walking house, the folkloric magic, the sense of creeping cold and ancient secrets is all so vivid. I’m a sucker for Slavic mythology, and while it took me a minute to separate this version of Baba Zima from the traditional Baba Yaga in my head, once I did, I really appreciated how Wiesebron carved out her own vision of this world.
That said, this is a slow read. Not in a bad way, but it just leans more on atmosphere, character, and vibes than action or romance (which is minimal and honestly could’ve been left out entirely). There were parts in the middle that dragged a bit for me, and the writing style sometimes got repetitive or overly descriptive. Still, there’s a quiet strength to the prose, and the payoff toward the end felt worth the build up. The ending left me wanting just a bit more but maybe that’s because I wasn’t ready to leave this world yet.
One thing worth noting: the book explores disability in a very central way, especially through Olena’s character. It’s clear the author wanted to dive into the complexities of how disability is seen and experienced in this world. While I appreciated the intention and the themes being addressed, there were definitely moments where the execution could’ve been more nuanced, especially in how Olena’s personality often felt entirely shaped by her trauma and appearance. I think there’s a powerful message at the core, but it didn’t always land as sensitively or fully realized as I hoped.
Still, for those who love a story rich in folklore, filled with prickly and strong willed characters, and rooted in themes of healing, secrecy, and strange magic, this book is absolutely worth a read. Think The Bear and the Nightingale meets Labyrinth with a touch of Naomi Novik’s dayt o day magical rhythms. It may not be for everyone, but if the idea of a snowy, eerie fairytale full of magic, mystery, and unlikely sisterhood speaks to you, then you’ll likely enjoy this one as much as I did.
Thank you to NetGalley, Lauren Wiesebron, and Avon Harper Voyager for the eARC of this book.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved this book...once I got into it. I initially found it quite hard to feel inspired by the story, but I found that it started to get going around 15-20% of the way in. This is a long (432 pages) slow-moving story written in the third person, giving you plenty of time to get to know the characters and the world.
Marisha has lost everything, and with her aunt pushing her to choose a husband from the less than adequate suitors she has been introduced to, drastic measures must be taken to secure her financial freedom. Despite always being warned to avoid kolduni, working as an assistant to Olena - the apprentice of possibly the most notorious koldunya, Baba Zima - is Marisha's only chance at freedom.
Marisha embarks on an increasingly perilous journey to help Olena find a cure to the sleeping plague that affects the region every 10 years. Along the way, she learns family secrets, agrees to carry out questionable tasks, risks becoming trapped in her dreams, and discovers just how far she will go for the people she cares for.
If you like fantasy and folklore (with hints of Sleeping Beauty and Howl's Moving Castle thrown in), give this a go!
Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a review copy of this book.
Marisha has lost everything, and with her aunt pushing her to choose a husband from the less than adequate suitors she has been introduced to, drastic measures must be taken to secure her financial freedom. Despite always being warned to avoid kolduni, working as an assistant to Olena - the apprentice of possibly the most notorious koldunya, Baba Zima - is Marisha's only chance at freedom.
Marisha embarks on an increasingly perilous journey to help Olena find a cure to the sleeping plague that affects the region every 10 years. Along the way, she learns family secrets, agrees to carry out questionable tasks, risks becoming trapped in her dreams, and discovers just how far she will go for the people she cares for.
If you like fantasy and folklore (with hints of Sleeping Beauty and Howl's Moving Castle thrown in), give this a go!
Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a review copy of this book.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc of The House of Frost and Feathers.
Review Summary:
The House of Frost and Feathers is part Slavic folklore, part magical schooling/tutelage, part coming-of-age story, and part commentary on disability and ableism. There's a lot to love about it — but unfortunately, it suffered from a stodgy middle and poor execution with the disability rep.
I found the folklore to be truly delightful, with tons of Slavic myths and monsters. The house and other folklore elements have a real personality to them. And the half-duck-half-guinea-pig? Delightful. The folklore elements added a lot of charm, humour and YA-appropriate horror to the story.
As a coming-of-age YA story, the book also had some poignant takes on family and friendship. A lot of characters discover that their parents and siblings aren't entirely who they thought they were — for good and for bad.
However, the book really did drag in the middle, and I think it would have benefited from a disability-informed sensitivity reader. It had a good message to share but floundered in the execution.
Detailed Review:
As far as YA books go, this is a long one. And while the beginning was intriguing and the last 20% absolutely hooked me, the middle was slow going.
I found it frustrating how much time characters spent ruminating over the same information, flip-flopping over what action they were going to take, and hiding relevant information from people for no good reason. You know when you're in a car that keeps stalling? That's what it felt like. The writing also at times felt mechanical.
But, the book really turned it around for the ending. It's funny; just the other day, my friends and I were debating whether it's better to read a good book with a mediocre ending or a mediocre ending with a good book. As a group, we couldn't reach a consensus. So, whether or not you should read The House of Frost and Feathers depends on what camp you fall into.
I also mentioned the book's handling of disability in the review summary. Disability is one of the biggest themes of the book. The big focus is on Olena, an apprentice witch and POV character who has a stump instead of a hand and a facial birthmark. But there's also a secondary character who feels pain whenever they touch anything with their hands; using magical objects can disfigure you; the main plot device is a disease that makes people fall asleep, sometimes for a year but sometimes for decades; a secondary character has a disabling sensitivity to noise; other characters lose limbs during the story... It's hard to think of a character who isn't in some way either disabled or affected by disability. And there's also a debate over medical ethics and consent that unfortunately gets dropped rather than explored or resolved.
But I want to talk more about how Olena's presented. To give credit to the author, she doesn't shy away from exploring how prejudice affects Olena, and she also shows that her disability doesn't make her less than anyone else. And while other characters turn to magic to cure themselves, Olena never does.
Olena is also shown as being unpleasant because of her disability; she is prickly and mean because others don't give her a fair chance, and she tends to assume the worst of people. Some marketing materials call Olena a "bitter apprentice", and her character arc is very clearly focused on her overcoming this.
I was really uncomfortable with how the book kept referring to Olena. Over 250 pages in, the main character still describes Olena's facial birthmark as "looking like a sinister mask". And Olena's most common body language or facial tells revolve around her birthmark — it frequently flushes purple to show she's embarrassed while the rest of her skin goes unmentioned, and she's constantly tracing the outline of it while other characters wonder if the skin feels different or if she's just memorised the location.
Perhaps most frustratingly of all, Olena doesn't have a single characteristic or personality trait that can't in some way be explained by her disability. Most of the other characters have well-rounded and distinctive personalities. But Olena? She's just angry and insecure and mean and traumatised, and it all comes down to her being disabled.
It's frustrating because there's the bones of a powerful message about being disabled, but the execution was flawed. Olena's disability is an important part of who she is, but she shouldn't just be her disability.
Review Summary:
The House of Frost and Feathers is part Slavic folklore, part magical schooling/tutelage, part coming-of-age story, and part commentary on disability and ableism. There's a lot to love about it — but unfortunately, it suffered from a stodgy middle and poor execution with the disability rep.
I found the folklore to be truly delightful, with tons of Slavic myths and monsters. The house and other folklore elements have a real personality to them. And the half-duck-half-guinea-pig? Delightful. The folklore elements added a lot of charm, humour and YA-appropriate horror to the story.
As a coming-of-age YA story, the book also had some poignant takes on family and friendship. A lot of characters discover that their parents and siblings aren't entirely who they thought they were — for good and for bad.
However, the book really did drag in the middle, and I think it would have benefited from a disability-informed sensitivity reader. It had a good message to share but floundered in the execution.
Detailed Review:
As far as YA books go, this is a long one. And while the beginning was intriguing and the last 20% absolutely hooked me, the middle was slow going.
I found it frustrating how much time characters spent ruminating over the same information, flip-flopping over what action they were going to take, and hiding relevant information from people for no good reason. You know when you're in a car that keeps stalling? That's what it felt like. The writing also at times felt mechanical.
But, the book really turned it around for the ending. It's funny; just the other day, my friends and I were debating whether it's better to read a good book with a mediocre ending or a mediocre ending with a good book. As a group, we couldn't reach a consensus. So, whether or not you should read The House of Frost and Feathers depends on what camp you fall into.
I also mentioned the book's handling of disability in the review summary. Disability is one of the biggest themes of the book. The big focus is on Olena, an apprentice witch and POV character who has a stump instead of a hand and a facial birthmark. But there's also a secondary character who feels pain whenever they touch anything with their hands; using magical objects can disfigure you; the main plot device is a disease that makes people fall asleep, sometimes for a year but sometimes for decades; a secondary character has a disabling sensitivity to noise; other characters lose limbs during the story... It's hard to think of a character who isn't in some way either disabled or affected by disability. And there's also a debate over medical ethics and consent that unfortunately gets dropped rather than explored or resolved.
But I want to talk more about how Olena's presented. To give credit to the author, she doesn't shy away from exploring how prejudice affects Olena, and she also shows that her disability doesn't make her less than anyone else. And while other characters turn to magic to cure themselves, Olena never does.
Olena is also shown as being unpleasant because of her disability; she is prickly and mean because others don't give her a fair chance, and she tends to assume the worst of people. Some marketing materials call Olena a "bitter apprentice", and her character arc is very clearly focused on her overcoming this.
I was really uncomfortable with how the book kept referring to Olena. Over 250 pages in, the main character still describes Olena's facial birthmark as "looking like a sinister mask". And Olena's most common body language or facial tells revolve around her birthmark — it frequently flushes purple to show she's embarrassed while the rest of her skin goes unmentioned, and she's constantly tracing the outline of it while other characters wonder if the skin feels different or if she's just memorised the location.
Perhaps most frustratingly of all, Olena doesn't have a single characteristic or personality trait that can't in some way be explained by her disability. Most of the other characters have well-rounded and distinctive personalities. But Olena? She's just angry and insecure and mean and traumatised, and it all comes down to her being disabled.
It's frustrating because there's the bones of a powerful message about being disabled, but the execution was flawed. Olena's disability is an important part of who she is, but she shouldn't just be her disability.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
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
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Plot: Marisha needs a job. Her brother is missing and her parents have fallen to a sleeping plague that has stricken the land for decades. Her choices are get a job or stay with her horrible aunt who just might marry her off to a, putting it nicely, less than favorable match with an older man. When she does very poorly at the last job interview she has she folds and interviews for a wandering koldunya. Despite her dislike and disbelief in the koldunic arts. She thinks they're a hack. As she said "Kolduni di nothing to help ease people's troubles, all they did was ease the desperate of their money." Or are they? Marisha gets the job and is taken on the ride of her life while she figures out what she believes, what is real, and who to trust.
Overall thoughts: I got my undergraduate degree in Russian Area Studies so I really enjoyed falling back into Slavic-y based folklore. I found Marisha charming and really felt for Olena, even if her stubbornness drove me a bit mad. I liked the world building, the tension between characters, and the magic in the world. Also who doesn't love a sentient, ever changing house? I also enjoyed the exploration of what it takes for people to believe and when do our doubts hurt us? When do they protect us and at what cost? However, I really felt the middle needed some cuts. The book overall could have been about 20% shorter in my opinion.
What made my weirdo heart happy:
Golgolin. I would like a guinea pig-duck please.
"Cows will fart piroshkis before I dance."
Overall thoughts: I got my undergraduate degree in Russian Area Studies so I really enjoyed falling back into Slavic-y based folklore. I found Marisha charming and really felt for Olena, even if her stubbornness drove me a bit mad. I liked the world building, the tension between characters, and the magic in the world. Also who doesn't love a sentient, ever changing house? I also enjoyed the exploration of what it takes for people to believe and when do our doubts hurt us? When do they protect us and at what cost? However, I really felt the middle needed some cuts. The book overall could have been about 20% shorter in my opinion.
What made my weirdo heart happy:
Golgolin. I would like a guinea pig-duck please.
"Cows will fart piroshkis before I dance."
Will I read more books by this author?: Yes.
Would I recommend this book to a friend?: I think so. For the right friends. Especially friends who I know love Slavic style books would really enjoy this I think.
[I received an ARC copy of this book from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Where Slavic folklore meets Howl's Moving Castle, this story brings us to a world where a dark plague looms over the people and threatens to find its next victim.
Marisha finds herself tangled in the story of kolduni, magic and something else.
Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the novel. I am a fan of Slavic folklore, so obviously this was a treat for me.
If I am not mistaken this is the author's first book and while there's room for improvement, it is quite a good quality for a new author.
I felt that sometimes the pace and the plot felt stretched to get to the point, with some moments where I didn't fully understand the reason of why this or that was happening.
The last part and ending felt a bit underwhelming to me, even if the plot is nicely tied together. But to me, it felt too open.
Regarding the romance parts, to me it was a nice addition, even though it is not a key point in the plot.
HoweverI believed that Marisha's romantic plot was unbelievable and could be totally ignored and the book wouldn't suffer from it.
In general it is a nice book to read, with the author clearly knowing about the topic. The writing can improve with more practice, but it is not terrible.
Definitely recommend.
Marisha finds herself tangled in the story of kolduni, magic and something else.
Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the novel. I am a fan of Slavic folklore, so obviously this was a treat for me.
If I am not mistaken this is the author's first book and while there's room for improvement, it is quite a good quality for a new author.
I felt that sometimes the pace and the plot felt stretched to get to the point, with some moments where I didn't fully understand the reason of why this or that was happening.
The last part and ending felt a bit underwhelming to me, even if the plot is nicely tied together. But to me, it felt too open.
Regarding the romance parts, to me it was a nice addition, even though it is not a key point in the plot.
However
In general it is a nice book to read, with the author clearly knowing about the topic. The writing can improve with more practice, but it is not terrible.
Definitely recommend.