The Bear and the Nightingale
Oct. 1st, 2017 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraThe Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden, 2017, recommended by someone at Readercon although I'm not digging out my paper notes to see who.
Pros: I read this in a day, couldn't put it down. Nifty feudal-Russian setting - I thought it was vague "fantasy Russia" but it turned out in the author's notes that a few of the people are actual historical figures and it's set in the 14th century. (I reread Josepha Sherman's The Shining Falcon a lot in the early 90s, definitely recommended to anyone else nostalgic for that book.) It isn't quite any one fairy tale but a combination/remix of fairy tale elements in a way that gives it a lot of resonance without making it predictable. Turns out it's the first of a trilogy but it stops in a satisfying place, no cliffhanger.
Content notes: rape and rape threats. These characters are in a context where consent for women to or in marriage isn't a thing, and Arden doesn't soften that. Animal harm. Deaths of parents/children.
Cons: behind spoiler cut. I thought for a bunch of this book that the protag and another character were going to figure out what they had in common and save the day in a glorious team-up. Not so much. I get that Arden was interested in exploring the trope of the wicked stepmother, but wow that ended up with that character getting completely shat on by the plot. And the exceptionalism around the protag in comparison turned me off. Several of the male characters talk about how, oh no, not *her*, the *protagonist* shouldn't have to be caged and crushed by the patriarchy - but what about her shat-upon foil? Just fine for her I guess? It's a pretty recent thing in my life that this would bother me, or that I would even notice it. When I was younger I was fine with freedom and good outcomes only coming to special girls. I believed in my specialness, other girls/women did often seem to be the enemy in real life, and I was barely even a girl anyways. I'm still kinda lukewarm on the girl thing, but I have come to believe that there is only liberation for me in solidarity with the liberation of women in general, their lot is my lot etc blah blah, and in this case, in this book, I identified more with the girl who fails to be special then the girl who is. We're supposed to see more of the protagonist's sister in the next book and I'll be curious to see what kind of role she plays, if Arden's world has room for sororal friendships and a place for "normal" women. Arden might be totally aware that her male characters' POVs are limited by the patriarchy they take for granted! She might be totally aware that the lack of that one vital conversation between women is the crux of the tragedy (for one of them), and doing that on purpose, so we can see how much better things could have been if they had managed it! Or maybe she's writing good reads with slightly uncomfortable gender politics, and that's fine, I'm not disrecommending, just discussing it.
Genre note: I'm not sure whether this is being marketed as YA or not, I think maybe not. We're maybe in enough heads of enough characters who aren't young adults that this is more like an adult fantasy novel that happens to have a young adult protagonist than a YA? I wouldn't reject it if you don't read YA, but if you *like* YA fantasy this might seem like a particularly good one?
Pros: I read this in a day, couldn't put it down. Nifty feudal-Russian setting - I thought it was vague "fantasy Russia" but it turned out in the author's notes that a few of the people are actual historical figures and it's set in the 14th century. (I reread Josepha Sherman's The Shining Falcon a lot in the early 90s, definitely recommended to anyone else nostalgic for that book.) It isn't quite any one fairy tale but a combination/remix of fairy tale elements in a way that gives it a lot of resonance without making it predictable. Turns out it's the first of a trilogy but it stops in a satisfying place, no cliffhanger.
Content notes: rape and rape threats. These characters are in a context where consent for women to or in marriage isn't a thing, and Arden doesn't soften that. Animal harm. Deaths of parents/children.
Cons: behind spoiler cut. I thought for a bunch of this book that the protag and another character were going to figure out what they had in common and save the day in a glorious team-up. Not so much. I get that Arden was interested in exploring the trope of the wicked stepmother, but wow that ended up with that character getting completely shat on by the plot. And the exceptionalism around the protag in comparison turned me off. Several of the male characters talk about how, oh no, not *her*, the *protagonist* shouldn't have to be caged and crushed by the patriarchy - but what about her shat-upon foil? Just fine for her I guess? It's a pretty recent thing in my life that this would bother me, or that I would even notice it. When I was younger I was fine with freedom and good outcomes only coming to special girls. I believed in my specialness, other girls/women did often seem to be the enemy in real life, and I was barely even a girl anyways. I'm still kinda lukewarm on the girl thing, but I have come to believe that there is only liberation for me in solidarity with the liberation of women in general, their lot is my lot etc blah blah, and in this case, in this book, I identified more with the girl who fails to be special then the girl who is. We're supposed to see more of the protagonist's sister in the next book and I'll be curious to see what kind of role she plays, if Arden's world has room for sororal friendships and a place for "normal" women. Arden might be totally aware that her male characters' POVs are limited by the patriarchy they take for granted! She might be totally aware that the lack of that one vital conversation between women is the crux of the tragedy (for one of them), and doing that on purpose, so we can see how much better things could have been if they had managed it! Or maybe she's writing good reads with slightly uncomfortable gender politics, and that's fine, I'm not disrecommending, just discussing it.
Genre note: I'm not sure whether this is being marketed as YA or not, I think maybe not. We're maybe in enough heads of enough characters who aren't young adults that this is more like an adult fantasy novel that happens to have a young adult protagonist than a YA? I wouldn't reject it if you don't read YA, but if you *like* YA fantasy this might seem like a particularly good one?
no subject
Date: 2018-07-08 03:02 am (UTC)But i also felt like the Christianity-vs-folklore bit wasn't much of a stretch or thinking outside the box. Like, i feel like i had the same reaction of not being able to put it down while i was reading it, but not feeling after the fact like it did anything all that creative.
That said, i think it did its thing reasonably well. And i guess she goes and hangs out with her sister in Moscow in the next one, so maybe that will be a thing?