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

4.0

I really enjoyed this book! I appreciated Arden's writing style and her cast of characters. Most of the characters had distinct personalities that allowed me to have specific feelings toward them. That is something a lot of books fail to do for me, where the characters have no personality of their own and I'm unable to care about them. But Arden was able to give us characters with distinct personalities even if they did not appear often in the book.
I'm not too familiar with Russian fairy tales so I enjoyed that aspect and I loved learning the Russian words and context from the glossary and author's note.
I also really, really appreciated that Vasilisa was not a copy and paste heroine who is always bold and fearless and is somehow plain and gorgeous at the same time. I loved that she was an imperfect child and adolescent, but we got to see her grow and learn.

I think some of the people voicing an opinion one way or another about the religious aspect of the book aren't considering what normal life was like in medieval eastern Europe. Some people are saying real world religion doesn't have a place in fantasy...I disagree with that, I feel like some readers just don't like it and others do.
I also don't believe Arden was trying say all religion leads to corruption. It's just something she incorporated in the book and the way I interpreted it was setting the values and expectations that surround Vasilisa and how to fantasy element intertwined with natural world.

I will say the last few chapters of this book kind of lost me, especially after the part where

Spoiler

Pyotr leaves to offer aid to the fires

. The fantasy element really amped up here and, maybe it's because I'm unfamiliar with Russian fairy tales but I had trouble understanding what was going on toward the end.