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

3.0

The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden

📱

⭐⭐⭐

I was so sure I would love this book but unfortunately it really didn’t work for me.

To start on a positive note, the main thing I hear about this book it how atmospheric it is and how beautiful the writing is. And I do agree with both of those things. I did enjoy reading this curled up under a blanket over Christmas with some snowy ambiance on the TV (because obviously we just get rain here).

I did enjoy the last third of the book which was full of the fairytale-like whimsy that I was promised and I think the slightly horrific/fantasy elements were really well done in this.

However, the main reason I didn’t like this book was that I was just so bored. Literally nothing happened until about 60% of the way through this book. Like many fairytales, this book has a bit of a detached storytelling style but because it took so long for the plot to get going, I didn’t care at all about any of the characters and even struggled to keep track of who they all were a lot of the time. And then by the time the plot did pick up a bit I was already so fed up with it all that I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have.

So I decided to give this 3 stars because I can acknowledge that this is well written and because I did enjoy the ending but I don’t plan on continuing with this series. But I think that if you enjoy historical fiction more and are wanting to branch into fantasy a bit this could work really well for you.

Content warnings: Child marriage, s*xual harassment, religious themes