The Bear and The Nightingale: (Winternight Trilogy) (Winternight Trilogy, 1)

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The court of the Grand Prince of Moscow is plagued by power struggles and rumours of unrest. Meanwhile bandits roam the countryside Arden’s debut novel has the cadence of a beautiful fairy tale but is darker and more lyrical.”—The Washington Post EXCLUSIVE COVERS: Completely redesigned covers created by @micaelaalcainodesign for all three books. After reading this I want to ditch all of my reading plans and just read this trilogy all over again! I loved this rambling from you 😉 Unfortunately for the villagers, Vasya doesn't go up in flames. Instead, she pops out of the fire and eats all their babies!

Medved was there all the time. Watching him, sometimes touching the icon with an admiration that to Konstatin seemed almost human. Despite this, the priest was sure he was enjoying his slow descent into madness and getting drunk on it. This is going to be a very weird review. While this is one of the best books I have read in the past couple of years, I think I’ll spend half the review criticizing things I didn’t like (and then I’ll spend the other half talking about mushrooms, but I’ll get to that later).

ARC given to me by my amazingly kind friend, who I don't deserve, but who has made my entire year - Lilly at Lair of Books! Following their adventures in The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower, Vasya and Morozko return in this stunning conclusion to the bestselling Winternight Trilogy, battling enemies mortal and magical to save both Russias, the seen and the unseen.

I know I’m being repetitive in voicing my thoughts on the positive things about the series. But Vasya was a constant highlight of the series from the first book to the end for me. It was simply rewarding to see how far she has struggled and developed since The Bear and the Nightingale. She’s badass, she breaks the harmful norm assigned to a gender, and her affection for her family never felt fake to me. The themes of family, faith, and prejudice were interspersed throughout the novel wonderfully. And my goodness, speaking of a star, I can’t believe how much I ended up loving Sasha. Sometimes, it was easy for Sasha to be overshadowed by Vasya’s presence because his POV chapters are much fewer compared to Vasya. But Arden has made sure that won’t be the case in The Winter of the Witch. Sasha shines in The Winter of the Witch. What a brother. What a character. In the final quarter of the novel, the peak of Sasha's character development turned him into my favorite character of the trilogy. I will have to leave this point at that.PRH: How do you find a balance between being somewhat faithful to the fairy tales that inspired you but without letting them dictate the structure of your novels? Me at a monastery just outside Великий Новгород. As a woman, you are only allowed to enter Orthodox churches with your head covered, and I decided I needed to document my abysmal head-scarf-wrapping skills. Still – wouldn’t it have been so much easier if people had sent Konstantin to a monastery instead of Lesnaya Zemlya? Anna Ivanova hopes to become a nun in the beginning of the novel. Her father refuses and makes her marry Vasja's father instead. i don't want to get into too many details, because it's book 3 of a thing, but i need to shout-out that l'il mushroom ded grib as my favorite new character. i'm sure this series will be turned into a show or film at some point, and i'm gonna want some ded grib merch. to play with my baby yoda merch. because i am grown.