A review by chelseacounsell
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

1.0

I felt like the story the back cover promised didn't start until halfway through the book. Meanwhile, the entirety of the story took place in a jarringly misogynistic, traditional Russia in which women are only valued for their child-producing abilities. (I didn't feel that the narrative took moral sides on this, but I think it should have, i.e. in the way that the reader obviously knows that what's happening in The Handmaid's Tale is wrong.) When the story finally did resolve, I wasn't satisfied because I felt the heroine never got the chance to actually play the heroine. I will not be reading the sequel.