Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - The Witch and the Tsar

Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

10 reviews

ttorisaurus's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

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alisonvh's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Baba Yaga is a mostly immortal half goddess trying to stop Ivan the Terrible from being so terrible. I love historical fiction, I love magic, I love talking animals, and I love stories about gods and goddesses messing with human affairs. Mix it all together and you have a book written just for me!

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lovosii's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense 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

5.0

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squids_can_read's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Baba Yaga has been apart from humans for a long time. That is, until a long-time friend of hers shows up at her door begging her for help. Now Yaga is thrown back into the world of mortals but will she be able to save the people she cares about?

I really enjoyed the first half and last 100 pages of this book. The rest of the book is really taken up by a trope that I really don't like. Yaga seems to not care about anything anymore except for her family while the whole book she had been fighting for Russia. The end of the book made it better but that section really just didn't work for me. The characters were interesting, the magic system was interesting, and the mythology was interesting. I just didn't totally vibe with it. Overall, it was just okay.

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eli_like_a_lie's review

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adventurous informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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alba_marie's review against another edition

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sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

3.5 stars

I think I would have been more receptive to this book if Russia wasn't currently being a prick and instigating a war in Ukraine, or if the story of the Baba Yaga was set in a different Eastern European location.

It was the tale of the Baba Yaga that drew me to this book. I used to live in Poland and heard tales of the infamous witch, the Baba Yaga. I love retellings and fairytales, and enjoy a good feminist retelling. I was intrigued to read a feminist version of this Slavic witch. However, I'm not sure Gilmore's Baba Yaga really lived up to my expectations...

I expected a good old fashioned redemption story. I am a sucker for both redemption stories and a villain's backstory. In fact, these are among my favourite tropes. Often the bad buy with the secret heart of gold is my favourite character, and tales that surround them fascinate me (think Lucifer, Crowley from Supernatural, Damon, Regina the Evil Queen...). So this one seemed very much my thing.

But then I read it, and Baba Yaga was just... Yaga. There was no redemption, at least not for her. There was no backstory. There was no "and this is all the bad shit that happened to me to get me here" or "this is who I really am but I'm misunderstood because of XYZ." Yaga was just nice. Nothing like the stories that cast her as a dark witch.

God after god was thrown at the reader, as were human characters, real and imagined. Every character had at least two or even three names. So many folkloric places were also included. So complex was it that she had to include a glossary – too bad it was at the end and I didn't realise it was there until I was halfway through. It was hard to keep track of it all. It was like Gilmore didn't know if she wanted to be Neil Gaiman in American Gods or Madeline Miller's Greek retellings, and in trying to do both, she succeeded in neither one.

The slightly whimsical purple prose did not allow me to be immersed as much as I'd want, and felt like the story was constantly keeping me at a distance. Plus, the Russian setting didn't add any favours. Over all, I really wanted to like it, and while I didn't dislike it, it wasn't the Baba Yaga story I was looking for.

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