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contention 's review for:
The Bear and the Nightingale
by Katherine Arden
I thought I would really enjoy this, but despite a more promising start, I found the characters underdeveloped and two-dimensional, and barely anyone was likeable. By the time everything started to look like it was actually headed somewhere, I had already become bored and irritated by Anna constantly hating and beating Vasya and being scared of demons, Pyotr looking at his kids like they were all simply waiting to be married off (and yes, that might have been the view back then, but people were still actual three-dimensional people back then as well, so that's no excuse for lack of nuance or complexity), the simplistic "Christianity good / pagan beliefs bad" view, the teaser of folkloric elements scattered throughout but nothing really substantial happening with that to give a clue as to what the point of the story was, and insufficient attention to actual relationships between characters so there is a sense of an actual tapestry being woven, not just a mishmash of isolated events happening to cookie-cutter characters who can barely communicate with each other.
I actually liked Vasya well enough, but even she was barely more than just the wild child who won't do as she's told and everyone suspects is a witch. Fine, so she's more likeable than the rest, but to be honest, since the folkloric side wasn't doing anything for me (despite that being what appealed in the first place) and most of the main characters were underdeveloped, I found myself idly wondering about the absentee characters, like how things turned out for the son who decided to become a monk, or what Pyotr felt about his new wife after his decision to provide his children with a mother seven years after his first wife's death. This last one would have been especially interesting to know and would have added depth, but instead any depth to his character just fizzles out from this point on.
As did my interest in reading this before I reached even a third of the way in.
I actually liked Vasya well enough, but even she was barely more than just the wild child who won't do as she's told and everyone suspects is a witch. Fine, so she's more likeable than the rest, but to be honest, since the folkloric side wasn't doing anything for me (despite that being what appealed in the first place) and most of the main characters were underdeveloped, I found myself idly wondering about the absentee characters, like how things turned out for the son who decided to become a monk, or what Pyotr felt about his new wife after his decision to provide his children with a mother seven years after his first wife's death. This last one would have been especially interesting to know and would have added depth, but instead any depth to his character just fizzles out from this point on.
As did my interest in reading this before I reached even a third of the way in.