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A review by zeph1337
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I picked this book up because I heard that it makes for a good standalone audiobook and I was looking for one of those. Also I wanted to read a Naomi Novik book for quite some time. So two birds with one stone, perfect!
First of let's start with the narration by Katy Sobey. I think overall it was good but not great. I think her voice was very good for the story the book was telling and made it very easy to get immersed in it. However I thought her ability to do different and distinct voices is not as good. I felt like it was missing some nuance to clearly make out who was talking at each moment. I also thought that the emotional delivery was a bit lacking but that could also just be me coming from an Andrea Parsneau audiobook recently.
As for the book itself: Yes, I liked it. It is a pretty cool dark fairytale retelling and it did hook me from pretty early on. I think especially the sense of wonder and mystery as we discover the world through the eyes of our 3 female protagonists is done in an excellent way. Yes it has a slow build up but I liked how we slowly started unraveling all the mysteries.
I found one of the 3 main POVs (Irina) to be a bit tedious at times. I guess she can best be described as this story's "fairytale princess" but I thoroughly enjoyed the other two and I also really enjoyed how dark the story got at certain points.
I thought the ending was very much telegraphed and predictable but you have to give credit to the author to excellently weave all the plot threads together.
First of let's start with the narration by Katy Sobey. I think overall it was good but not great. I think her voice was very good for the story the book was telling and made it very easy to get immersed in it. However I thought her ability to do different and distinct voices is not as good. I felt like it was missing some nuance to clearly make out who was talking at each moment. I also thought that the emotional delivery was a bit lacking but that could also just be me coming from an Andrea Parsneau audiobook recently.
As for the book itself: Yes, I liked it. It is a pretty cool dark fairytale retelling and it did hook me from pretty early on. I think especially the sense of wonder and mystery as we discover the world through the eyes of our 3 female protagonists is done in an excellent way. Yes it has a slow build up but I liked how we slowly started unraveling all the mysteries.
I found one of the 3 main POVs (Irina) to be a bit tedious at times. I guess she can best be described as this story's "fairytale princess" but I thoroughly enjoyed the other two and I also really enjoyed how dark the story got at certain points.
I thought the ending was very much telegraphed and predictable but you have to give credit to the author to excellently weave all the plot threads together.