What can I say about Naomi Novik except that she's a brilliant writer and Spinning Silver only adds to her brilliant reputation. I've been a fan of Naomi for nearly a decade since I found her Temeraire novels on a trip to the US and I've yet to be disappointed by one of her books. Spinning Silver takes several wonderful fairytales and spins (sorry, bad pun) them wonderfully together with three amazingly strong female leads to create a book that it gripping from page 1.

Spinning silver is a complex, beautiful and deeply magical story following three women – Miriyem, a Jewish moneylender’s daughter so successful it is said she can turn silver into gold, Wanda, a young girl fighting to protect herself and her brothers from their abusive father and Irina, daughter to a duke, branded uninteresting and all but forgotten after her mother’s death. Each is given their lot in life, and each fights to create their own future in a world very much against them.
 
A beautiful blend of realism and fantasy, the daily lives of these women occur alongside the mysterious Staryk road – a shining white river of a road that shifts and bends through the woods upon which ride the gold-hunting Staryk, icy and merciless as they take all they desire back to their own kingdom during the winter months. Even within well-guarded walls, Irina is not safe from the world beyond – The Tsar is young, handsome, and the son of an executed witch, and she has been placed directly in his view. The stories of Miriyem and Wanda are closely linked, with Irina’s struggles seemingly far removed and distant – until a bag of Staryk silver them together.
 
This book is stunningly written, it’s my first time reading Novik’s work and I will definitely be reading more! The Staryk, with their skin like crystallised ice and their kingdom of white and silver were so stunningly brought to life on the page. I’m quite a visual reader, if that makes any sense, I love imagery and description and world-building that really allows me to envision the characters and places I am reading about and for this Novik has an incredible talent. This is a long book (in pdf format anyway, it’s always interesting reading a book with no knowledge of how close the end is – amazon tells me it’s 480 pages) but it was so tremendous that I didn’t feel bogged down or bored at any stage. Quite the opposite, I had a busy week and I still managed to finish it in about 8 days of frantic lunchtimes of reading and wrist pain – holding up an ipad is not the same as a book. The way the stories overlap and intertwine is fantastic, and the characters were just wonderful – even the villains were complex and exciting and there were elements I simply didn’t see coming.
 
Seriously, when you get to the bits with Tsar Mirnatius (amazing name, I know) things get gothic and I love it.
 
I also really enjoyed reading about Miriyem’s culture and beliefs, and how they shape her life. It occurred to me while reading this that many fantasy novels either shy away from religion, or create their own – to read about the magic of the Staryk alongside an intelligent, likable and complex jewish protagonist was really interesting to me. Her family and the broader Jewish community faced anti semitism throughout the novel – called greedy for doing their jobs as moneylenders, attacked and shunned and mocked in the streets – but stood strongly together in the face of this discrimination. Miriyem even point-blank refuses to adhere to the demands of the Staryk king if he will not allow her to respect Shabbat and abstain from working for the duration of it despite his threats against her life.
 
The women in this novel – and some of the men, including Wanda’s brothers Stepon and Sergey – are placed in seemingly inescapable situations, often by their sex and social status, and each has to use every advantage they can find to stay alive. From the frozen isolation of the Staryk kingdom to the opulence and danger of the Tsar’s palace, this is a world run by the men who own and imprison them, and it is one they refuse to be defeated by.
 
I genuinely loved this novel, it was magical and exciting and I just didn’t know what was going to happen next. I would absolutely recommend this, and will no doubt be reading every book Naomi Novik writes for the rest of time!
 
Overall rating: 5 books out of 5

I received an ARC of this book over two months ago and I was insanely excited for this book’s release got an ARC of this book but didn't get to finishing (or starting) it before my signed preorder arrived in the post. It conveniently arrived on a Friday and right as I was finishing another awesome book. I normally hate to read hardback books because I don't like to cart them to and from work. It arrived in time to be a weekend read. I didn't start it until the Saturday and pretty much devoured it in under 24 hours. I read it quickly but it did have flaws.

I’ll begin with the bad to get it out of the way. I didn't like the continually switching POV, especially as more seemed to be introduced as the book went on. I expected maybe two from the summary but the number kept increasing. I never lost track of who was narrating and the voice of each character was distinct so I was never confused as to who was narrating when. It was well done in the sense. But then often the different POV went over the same events from different perspectives. Sometimes this overlap was necessary to explain to the reader how an event was significant and that only became apparent from a different perspective. Even so, I felt like it slowed the pace of the whole story going back over the same thing again. I also think by having multiple POV it left me questioning why each of these characters was significant. I think some of the viewpoints added only a small amount to the story as a whole. The characters helped play a role in the story but not enough to justify their role in telling that story. It doesn't detract from the book, but it bothered me to some degree whilst reading.

That's my biggest complaint with the whole book really, I do not like excessive numbers of POV because I am easily confused and tend to like certain storylines more than others. Although, in this, all the storylines converged into one of the grand finale, which I did enjoy and that made it quite interesting. I just wish I’d been more prepared for the multiple POVs from the summary and I might’ve been more okay with it.

I will say I loved how this book is very much focused upon the women's story. Irina and Miryem are the main characters really, it's their two stories which are the focus. Miryem as the moneylenders daughter who finds she is far more skilled at the job than her father ever was and the mess that gets her into and the story of Irina who gets caught up in Miryem's machinations to please a Winter King and finds herself being sent to a Tsar as his wife and the terrible secret he holds. I won't reveal too much but I will say these two stories meant both characters had a hard path of difficult decisions and both always tried to what they thought best. I didn't always agree with them or like their actions, but they did it for their family and for their people. I respected them for that, especially as they proved they were such strong female characters who could best the men around them and show they were smart and powerful, even when both weren't claimed to be beautiful or possessed a vast power to make them a chosen one to save everyone. Instead, they had intelligence and respected that.

I really loved the magical way in which Naomi Novik wrote this book as well. Uprooted felt like a fairytale to me and this was no different. It was an amalgamation of various fairytales and folklore and it was so very interesting to read. I think I preferred Uprooted for it's more natural folklore centred within the forest and there was a whole heap of political machinations occurring here which I didn't fancy. But I did enjoy how much it felt set in the past, especially as Miryem was a Jewish moneylender, as her father and grandfather were, and the book never glossed over the fear and hatred her people had experienced being driven from countries out of fear and how they were hated for their jobs with their money. They were accused of taking more than they were due and being greedy when really people were angry to see others have wanted they wanted and were angry and covetous. I won't delve into a history lesson, though. It was just really nice to see historical elements interspersed in the story.

I didn't love every element of the book but I couldn't stop reading so it wasn't all bad. Novik has a way with words and is skilled in writing a fairytale for grown ups. I preferred Uprooted but I'm sure many will love the story within the pages of this book instead, it's all a matter of personal preference really.

After struggling a little to find my way into this book, once I did, it was an absolute delight. It tells the intertwining stories of three girls; Miryem, the money lender who discovers an ability to turn silver to gold, Irina, who becomes tsarina to a very troubling tsar and Wanda, the girl working for Miryem to pay off her father's debt. Throw in the winter king and a fire demon, along with a witch's cottage in the woods and a dead mother in the guise of a tree, and what you get is a very dark and somehow incredibly realistic fairy tale. I loved the structure of the narrative as the point of view character changed from section to section, providing a real variety in tone which I thought was fantastic. The characters are really well drawn and their motivations always seemed authentic. The prose is quite spare and matter of fact, which just contributes to the realism of this fantasy world. As I say, it did take me a beat to get into the story, but I would recommend this to anyone who likes fairy tale re-tellings/re-imaginings or anyone who enjoys the Katherine Arden novels set in Russia. All in all, this was a really good book that I am very pleased I persevered with - I would have missed out on something great!
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

My Rating: 4.5/5 Stars!

Okay, so, where to begin? This book is so expansive. I felt like I was getting multiple different stories, perhaps even a trilogy, all in under 500 pages when reading this book. I LOVED it. Then again, I knew I’d love it because as I learnt with Uprooted, Naomi Novik is a fairytale genius.

I want to start with talking about the writing style. Novik’s writing is truely wonderful. It’s so beautiful and lyrical with just the right level of description. I adore the way she writes and tells stories. The first 100-200 pages of this book read like a fairytale; it’s more of a lyrical recounting of events. A LOT happens in this first portion and in order to set up the level of depth and layers within this book, there is a lot that happens quickly and is simply told without much character insight or personality. However, once the story is completely set up, we start to delve more into each character’s personality and thoughts. We see their motives and how they affect the story. It’s incredibly well done.

This brings me onto one of my next points. This is a multiple perspective, first person story. But unlike most books written this way, there is no heading or indication at the start of each new perspective to tell you who’s POV we are reading. At first this bugged me because I struggled to grasp who I was reading about, but once we got further into the book and got to know each character better, this became easy to distinguish. By the middle of the book we reach six different perspectives, however, Novik develops a completely different writing style and voice for each character that makes them easily identifiable within the first sentance. This is some of the most fantastic writing I have ever read in its ability to do that. Each character has a different education level, age, social standing, temperment and Novik brings each of those across with ease in a way that allows us to distinguish by the end of the book each character’s perspective by the writing style alone.

One of the characters, Stepon, a young boy of low social standing and education is the most sympathetic character in the book. He’s sweet and innocent, and seeing some of the darkest moments of the story unfold from his perspective adds another layer to the story. Stepon also reads to me as having some kind of difficulty, possibly autism. He struggles to understand people and often remarks that he prefers goats because he can understand what they need and what their actions mean, and he cannot do so with humans. He also later in the story struggles to cope with loud noises and crowds and ends up having panic attack symptoms. I thought this was a very important perspective to include in a story such as this. I feel that fairytale retelling fantasy novels do not include some of the representation that other books are now starting to portray. Traditional fairytales do not include people with disabilities, and often neither do books with a medieval setting, though in reality there would have been plenty of people with conditions such as autism in the medieval world, and Novik’s choice to portray this breaks that. It provides representation in a story that others of its genre would not even think to include.

Carrying on from this, Novik also uses this fairytale setting to explore some other more serious topics such as racism and prejudice. One of the main characters we follow is Miryem, who comes from a family of Jewish moneylenders. Russia, where this book is set, has a long history of anti-semitism, which Novik brings into the story in the way in which the Mandlestam family are treated. This book challenges the treatment of those who are different. It challenges social standing, the meaning of family and the expectations of women within a medival society. This all gives a further level of depth to an already complex story.

However, this book wasn’t perfect. I felt like the magic system wasn’t fully explained at times and there were some aspects of magic that I didn’t quite understand. There were some characters (one in particular) who could suddenly do magic and I felt that it wasn’t explicitly clear why they suddenly has that power. I also found that with so many perspectives, we did not get to see how each character was affected in the aftermath of the book’s climax which I would have liked. I would have liked specifically to read more of Mirnatius’s perspective on his relationship and how he was affected at the end of the book and when that didn’t come I did miss it. However, this are small criticisms in the midst of a truly positive review.

Overall, this book is made up of layer upon layer of intricate plot lines and character development. I have never encountered another story where each character’s voice was so individually developed. This absolutely lived up to the hype for me and was a fitting follow up to Uprooted. Novik’s exceptional writing talent and ability to completely reimagine a fairytale whilst still preserving the feel of being lost in a traditional fairytale truly shine through in this book.

“There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away.”

The prose was beautiful. It didn't quite match Uprooted for me, but I'm not sure if that's because I had to read it on one sitting on my laptop.

Naomi Novik is one of the best at writing fairytales. It seems almost as if she dug up a treasure quest to find the plots, rather than created them aknew.

Oh, how I love Naomi Novik. I loved UPROOTED, and I love this - what's brilliant about her fantasy writing is you sort of get sidetracked with the surface elements of the story, then she hits you with the deeper themes of the writing. I'm going to go and buy the gorgeous hardback of this! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this early.

I read an ARC received from Pan Macmillan via Netgalley.

“Thrice you shall turn silver to gold for me, or be changed to ice yourself.”

Sometimes, there is an author whose books you know you need to read. An author who has been recommended by countless friends; whose books are some of the most well-known amongst fantasy readers and normal readers alike.

Naomi Novik is one of those authors. I have had Uprooted on my shelves for I’m not quite sure how long. Yet Spinning Silver was the first of Novik’s work that I’ve read.

And to say I devoured it is a slight understatement.

It was gone in a day. I didn’t bother with lunchtime gym sessions, after work drinks – even saying hi to my housemate. I went to work reading, came home reading, and carried on till it was done. I just couldn’t help it – it was so good!

Imagine the story of Rumpelstiltskin, but set in a wintery country with elf Lords, money lenders, and fiery demons. The general themes are there – the importance of names, turning ordinary things into gold – but there is so much more to this story than a simple retelling.

Novik’s writing is, for lack of a better term, immense. It has all the heart, family, and magic you could ask for, and her pacing will make you desperate to turn the page yet horrified at the concept of finishing the book.

“Blue shadows stretched out over the snow, cast by a pale thin light shining somewhere behind me, and as my breath rose in quick clouds around my face, the snow crunched: some large creature, picking its way toward the sleigh.”

My only tiny issue is the ending. It was too well wrapped for me. But that’s a completely personal preference and only because I’m dead inside.

All in all, an absolute brilliant book and comes highly recommended. I think Uprooted just made its way to the top of my TBR!

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.



Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver is inspired by fairytales (most notably, the one about Rumpelstiltskin) and Eastern European folklore. The story follows three young women: Miryem, a moneylender's daughter, Wanda, working off her family's debt in Miryem's household, and Irina, a duke's neglected daughter. There are also supernatural beings, the Staryk, who are drawn to gold and who bring in winter.

It's an amazingly gripping novel, drawing the reader in from the very first pages. It's captivating. It's creepy. There is magic, there is winter, there is silver and love. There are complicated family relationships and family responsibilities, there are friendships and difficult loyalties. And the story keeps taking unexpected turns, leaving the reader breathless and curious for more.

Personally, I just love Novik's writing, her style, the atmosphere she is able to create in her novels. Spinning Silver follows in the footsteps of her previous fairytale- and folklore-inspired story, Uprooted, especially when it comes to the mood and the themes, but despite some similarities, it is quite a different book. I really can't wait to see what Novik writes next. And I'm going to be re-reading Spinning Silver a lot in the future.

Once upon a time, I read a book called UPROOTED and I found it to be a fabulous novel. So, I was thrilled to get the chance to read SPINNING SILVER, a new novel by Naomi Novik. Now this novel is a stand-alone fantasy novel that in some ways feels like a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.

READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION: http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id=66368

Actual rating 3.5/5 stars.

Novik is a name I have been eager to read from for a considerable time. I have some of her previous releases already on my shelves and many more lingering on my Amazon wishlist. She was an author I fully expected to love and she has never released a title that did not sound appealing to me. When I was given the chance at an e-arc of her recent release I couldn't say yes fast enough and went into the book with crazily high expectations that were never shattered but, unfortunately, slowly whittled away at, over the course of my reading this book.

Miryem is the impoverished and starving daughter of a failed moneylender. Wanda takes the brunt of her drunken father's anger as she struggles to raise her younger brothers. Irina’s father schemes to wed her to a tsar with a dark secret. But what these three females are yet to discover is that there are bigger fears than the ones closest at hand. And his name is Winter.

This Rumpelstiltskin retelling was clever in its construction. I adored the way Novik utilised many characters in her creation of this one, by giving them each one of his notable characteristics. I also loved the creation of this world. I read this during some rarely seen British sunshine, but it took only a few words for me to become immersed in the snowy landscape of this kingdom. Most of all I appreciated how truly Novik's writing mirrored that of the fairy tale greats. This book managed to be both simplistic yet lyrical, in a way I have only ever discovered in the writing of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson.

But all these fantastic qualities of the book were not enough to keep me continually engaged. I was intrigued about the events unfurling but never overly invested in the characters plight. I also found some sections took too long to reveal their reason for inclusion and this added to my distance from this story-line. The ending provided the final severing, when many answers I had been yearning for were never provided.

It is unfortunate I could not feel a greater affinity for this novel but I have still not written this author off and am still keen to explore other of her creations.

4 of 5 stars
https://lynns-books.com/2018/07/16/spinning-silver-by-naomi-novik/
Spinning Silver was a book of surprises. A story that brings together the faint whisper of other fairytales and a tale that I was fully immersed in for the most part, in fact I’d go so far as to say I was all but convinced that this would be the one. And, in some respects I preferred this to Uprooted. It’s beautifully written and some of the characters are just wonderful to read. I think the only thing that prevented this becoming the perfect read was a slightly stilted feeling that I experienced during the second half of the read combined with maybe one too many character povs. But, for now, yes, this is a beautifully rendered retelling of Rumplestiltskin that gave me chills reading, not just because of the cold and aloof Staryks that inhabit their own icy world, but also because of the shivers you feel when you’re reading a book that seems near perfect.

The story is loosely based on the original fairytale. In fact I love the way that we begin the journey with the strong voice of Miryem explaining that not everything you hear in your bedside stories really happened in the way depicted. In fact, she’s here to put the record straight. Miryem’s father is a moneylender, but a very poor one who doesn’t seem to grasp the concept and very rarely collects the debts he’s owed leaving his family more often than not with a lack of food on the table, fuel to keep them warm and the basic comforts of life. Miryem becomes tired of seeing her mother suffer and basically, much to her parents shame and consternation, takes over the running of the business and does so not only with ruthless determination but also with a certain flair that demonstrates how well suited she is to the business. Of course her exploits don’t go unnoticed and soon she finds herself on the receiving end of unwanted attention from the Staryks. Creatures of myth, the Staryk only ride forth to take gold. They’re cold and seemingly heartless – I’m not really sure if they’re from the winter court of the fae but that’s what came to mind when reading about them. Changing silver into gold is much akin to magic in their covetous eyes and so Miryem finds herself being drawn into an unwanted and seemingly impossible bargain.

At the same time we make the acquaintance of Irina. Born into a noble house, Irina spends her time trying to keep beneath the notice of her father. Her father is disappointed in Irina. She isn’t beautiful enough to attract a suitor who is well connected and she seems to have inherited nothing of her mother’s other-worldly characteristics. But Irina is clever, she uses the invisibility that her feminine demeanour bestows to listen when none would believe her to be interested and so is politically astute and knowledgeable in terms of potential contenders for the crown. More than that Irina cares about the people who she will ultimately be responsible for and this leads her to take great risks in order to protect them.

As if that wasn’t enough we have a third strong female character in Wanda. Wanda and her brothers suffer horrible cruelty at the hands of their drunken and abusive father. Wanda however manages to find herself a position working for Miryem and her parents and her steadfast reliability gradually sees Wanda becoming almost invaluable – to such an extent that her brothers all eventually become entangled with Miryem’s family.

So. I’m not going further into the plot. Just read it.

What I really loved about this book. Well, firstly, the start of the book was positively enchanting and was just like reading a fairytale for adults. The pacing was spot on, the descriptions were evocative. The forest, the cold, the fear of the unknown, Miryem’s tale, everything about this was captivating. And I was suitably enchanted. I also really enjoyed Irina’s story. The way she dealt with the people around her, her compassion and strength, again, a very compelling part of the story. Wanda’s story was, for me, the weaker link in that she felt necessary in some respects to drive the plot forward. That being said, I still found myself very intrigued as things began to unfold. Then, there’s the writing. The descriptions and the dialogue are just so damned good that I can’t even begin. I loved the frosty kingdom and the people we met there. I loved the threat from the fire demon and I particularly loved the feeling that other stories were playing a part – particularly strong Hansel and Gretel vibes, even Little Red Riding Hood and maybe a couple more.

In terms of criticisms. I felt like there were just one too many POVs and not all of them really brought anything to the table – not that I could discern anyway. I also felt the story slowed down somewhat when the two leading ladies began to formulate their plans. Something went missing about that point for me, I didn’t feel the tension as much as I felt I should, I was intrigued, but not as gripped and the fundamentals of all of it felt like it left the realms of fairyland and was too ‘real’ somehow’.

To conclude though, I would definitely recommend this to lovers of fairytales retold. In spite of a few niggles I had a very good time with this and found it quite hypnotic. It has a great ending – although I would have liked more (just saying) – and I sincerely hope that Naomi Novak takes up the pen again to bring us some more enchanting fairytales told in her own sweet style.

I received a copy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

This book is a kind of Rumplestiltskin retelling and one I was really excited to read. Miryem is rumoured to be able to turn silver into gold and as the rumour spreads, the Fairy King of Winter gets involved and sets her a task to complete. If she fails she will die. If she triumphs a fate worse than death awaits.

The writing in this book is great but perhaps a little over descriptive in parts and lacking in action in others. There are a lot of characters in this book and many of them get their own point of view so if this is something you enjoy this book will be perfect.

Miryem's character is well written and as a reader, I was glued to the pages as she survived one thing after another. She's a strong character and her chapters were a joy to read. With so many characters though it was a little hard to follow after a while.

There's a lot to love about this story and at times the writing was absolutely gorgeous. The story drew me in and the magical atmosphere captured my heart. I would have given the book five stars if it weren't for all the different character POVs as these did get a little confusing.

Spinning Silver was a book I was desperate to love and enjoy, and for a while I did. I think where Spinning Silver really shines is the beginning and the end. For me, the middle was where I really struggled. I got to the point with the story where I just wanted it to be over if I’m honest, the characters began to bore me a little and I thought the pace slowed down to slower than a walk. I was kinda chomping at the bit for something to happen or just anything exciting to happen. There is definitely a lot more description than action in this book.

I loved the premise of this book and I thought that there was definite potential for the storyline. I thought the way the story was framed as a Rumplestiltskin retelling was well done and the links were well distinguished in the story. I definitely loved the culture that was woven all the way through this story and the way I recognised some of it and learnt an awful lot. PLUS it wasn’t thrown in your face as some books will but was subtle and well written. To be honest, I have nothing bad to say about the actual writing, I think this book is beautifully written and the world artfully crafted, the pacing was just a little off for me.

The part where Spinning Silver went wrong for me was the fact that there were SO many characters and most of them have their own point of view which in some cases added something to the story and others just added to the word count and didn’t really added to the story. I just got to the point where I wanted to find out what happened in the end because I was so invested but really couldn’t read any more of the different point of views.

I would have loved without giving too much away for the ending to be more developed than it was. I think having more about how everything ended and the measures that were taken to get to the solution that was reached. I was way more interested in the politics and everything surrounding that then some of the characters and their stories. It just felt that the ending was a little rushed and I just wasn’t satisfied. Which was a shame really, I just wished I could have switched the focus of the ending and the middle.

I don’t know whether I would recommend this book because I don’t know whether I will be picking it up again. The weird thing is even with all my issues with the story I wouldn’t rule out picking it up again and I’m even considering going out to grab a physical copy so I can have it on my shelves. So completely mixed feelings on this one!

Thanks to Netgalley for sending me an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Everyone and their grandparents in the book community seems to be excited for Spinning Silver. Novik’s other release, Uprooted, a few years back was a glorious and descriptive fairy tale retelling, a kind of mix of Beauty and the Beast with a splash of Rapunzel thrown in for good measure. I really enjoyed that one, so I was looking forward to having pre-release access to Novik’s latest release. And as soon as I heard it was inspired by the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin [A.K.A. my favourite ever character on OUAT] I knew I had to read it.

Spinning Silver wasn’t quite what I expected. It was easy enough to get into, and Miryem’s character was incredibly sympathetic as she struggles to deal with her family’s poverty because her dad is too generous a money-lender. She was an interesting character, and I could almost feel my heart beating faster and faster as she survived one calamity after another. She came across as a really strong and tenacious character, and I quite enjoyed reading her chapters.

The other characters were also interesting, and I wanted to know how things wrapped up for them at the end of the novel, but I struggled a lot with the different perspective chapters. After a while, we shift from Miryem to Wanda and Irena and the tsar and Wanda’s brother and other perspectives I’ve probably forgotten about in the last few days since I read this book. And that was somewhat less thrilling, because I think, jumbled together like that [there wasn’t a particular pattern or order to who would be narrating the next chapter] it became pretty hard to distinguish whose chapters I was reading. In addition, this multi-perspective thing was complicated because it meant the plot got very convoluted in places. Stories and characters overlap and merge into one another, with characters who were strangers meeting each other later in the novel but for me it just meant that, after a while, everything became a giant coincidence. It just so happened that Miryem went to a house where Wanda happened to be. It just so happened that Irena meets Miryem. Writing this, it sounds a bit unfair, because it seems odd to me that I can complain about the coincidence of characters meeting when they’re all strangers who appear in the same book, because obviously as characters in the same book they’re as likely to meet up as Nina is with Kaz in Six of Crows or Blue is with Gansey in The Raven Cycle. Of course there’s a chance they’re going to meet, if they’re in the same book. But it still just seems a little bit too coincidental in places for me to really sink my teeth into.

The other thing that I found odd, which I only really understood after reading through reviews on Goodreads, is the frequent mentions of Jews in Spinning Silver. The book is a fantasy novel, set in a country which is a sort of kind of Russia [at least that was what I was getting from terms like Irinushka and tsar] but it isn’t actually Russia or any real place. So it seemed a bit odd to me that we had a make-believe fantasy country but a real religion and culture thrown in there. But yes, we see frequent references to Judaism, with Miryem and her family practising the faith. As the Goodreads review I read [the author of this post is called Emily May if you want to read her review] pointed out, Novik herself is of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, and the book uses that whole Rumpelstiltskin tale to tackle Jewish moneylender stereotypes. There are several Rumpelstiltskin type characters in Spinning Silver, but perhaps the prime example is Miryem herself, which I found incredibly fascinating. I won’t go into too much detail because spoilers, but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect and it just goes to show the amount of layers and symbolism in this book.

One of the other things the novel does do well is the setting. It has a very fairytale kind of vibe to it, with dark twisted lands, mentions of evil witches, and the cold, snowy landscape of Eastern Europe serves as a perfect backdrop. There’s so many atmospheric and creepy descriptions in this book that I couldn’t pick just one example, but they are all so gorgeous and intricate.

All in all, I’m going to give Spinning Silver a 7/10 stars. It was a really interesting book, and I was gripped by the opening, but I felt a little bit lost by all the different perspectives and confusing and sometimes convoluted plot. It could have done with some chapters or events cut out, but I really enjoyed reading Miryem’s sections and I did grow to be invested in all of the other main characters too. I also find it fascinating how the book uses a traditional fairytale to subvert and challenge stereotypes, as that is something I haven’t seen too often in fantasy books. I’ve also not seen a whole lot about the Jewish faith in fantasy books either, so this was a welcome and interesting addition to my kindle.

Spinning Silver is a new standalone work of fantasy from Naomi Novik. It has something of the fairytale about it, in the rhythmic language, and in some of the narrative structural underpinnings – but, much like 2015’s ‘Uprooted’, there’s a lot more going on. In a sense, this is a fairy-tale for grown ups, but it’s not just that. It’s a story about power and the exercise thereof, and about agency – denying it, fighting for it, holding onto it. It’s a story about women and how they define themselves alongside or against social expectations. It’s a story about faith, and how that faith can hinder or help you. It is, in short, a book filled with interesting ideas, which it explores at the same time as being an absolutely cracking story of magic, strange creatures, and normal families doing their best to get by in extraordinary circumstances.

The heart of the book is a triad of different women. Miryem, the daughter of a less than successful moneylender, is a force to be reckoned with. She has a firm eye on what needs to be done to make success out of adversity. Miryem is not received well in a village which is used to borrowing money and then not having to pay it back – her stubborn refusal to take no for an answer is backed by a cool ferocity and determination which lets her come straight off the page, sharp edges, strong will and all.

In Miryem’s efforts to make a profit and lift her family out of penury, she’s ably assisted by Wanda, who acts as her collections agent. Wanda has her own problems, though – a family on the edge of starvation, an abusive alcoholic father, and an unusual mother. Wanda’s efforts to make ends meet, and to make a life for herself not defined by the expectations of those around her are incredibly impressive and also terribly poignant. That Wanda and Miryem work side by side is one thing – but alternate points of view show us how each thinks of the other and how they see each other, a reminder that perspective is everything.

The third leg of that perspective is Irinushka. A duke’s daughter, she carries the material comforts that the other two decidedly do not. But while Miryem’s family is supportive and perhaps too kind, Irinushka’s father is cool, distant, calculating. To him she is nothing more than a bargaining chip – a perspective he shares with Wanda’s father, though the levels at which they operate are rather different. Like the other two women, Irinushka is desperate for something of her own, to escpae the straitjacket of conformity placed on her by family, politics and social convention. If her father doesn’t beat her, as Wanda’s does, still she has little in the way of support network –her only confidant being her aged childhood carer.

If there’s a thread tying these three together, its that they’re absolutely fierce. Miryem is an implacable iceberg, who is always prepared to break against a problem until she can resolve it. Wanda is quieter, perhaps more subtle, evading issues she can’t resolve, and trying to struggle out of a family history which prevents her from thinking of fighting back. Irinushka has the most material freedom, but is further locked into a cage of expectations. Each of them has their own voice, their own needs, their own differences. They share a desire to do things, to break the paradigms that lock them in place, to empower their own decision making – and a willingness to face the consequences. Seeing these three, from very different backgrounds, face their fears and the rage of others, to demand that they be allowed to be themselves, is at once heartbreaking and incredibly powerful; this is a story which carries an emotional kick like a mule, and it uses that kick often. And it hurts, but in a good way.

But anyway. These are women in a fairly tale, though not one where happy endings are guaranteed. There’s magic about, and creatures abroad which might not even loosely be described as friendly. Novik gives us a world almost recognisable in childhood memory, one where the stark white of the world is everywhere, and where the Tsar holds sway over his country, but doesn’t ask questions about what happens at its borders, seen or unseen. I’ve already mentioned the prose, but was delighted on a re-read to notice that the cadence is right for having the book read aloud; it may not be entirely child safe, but that linguistic effort gives the story some of its fairytale charm; there’s other familiar faces in here, too – elfin strangers, handsome princes, bad (and good) bargains –b ut here there’s a story under the story, a complexity which suggests that this, the book you’re reading, is the narrative that happens after the one you tell the children, or happens beside it, out of their sight.

This is a multi-layered text, one which is going to reward several readings. It has characters which have been built in such a complex, nuanced way that you may half expect them to come off the page and start talking to you. The world it inhabits will have you looking for the crisp crunch of snow underfoot, even in high summer – I found myself reading parts of the story during a recent heatwave in an effort to cool down! And the characters – I mean I’ve touched on the core trio, but they’re surrounded by an ensemble all with the same sense of inner life – from Irinushka’s old nurse, remembering terrors long gone by, to Wanda’s supportive brothers, to her appalling, broken father, to the terrors out of the night who are both more and less terrible than they seem – they all feel alive, present, real.

Should you be reading this? Yes. It’s a true tour-de-force of fantasy, one which kept me turning pages to find out what happened next, but also challenged my expectations of the story and the characters within it. This is a book which will sit in your head for days afterwards, even as its one which you can’t put down late into the night.

So, once again, should you be reading this? Yes. It’s fantastic, in all sense of the word. Give it a try.

This was the first time I'd read a book by Novik. Her Temeraire series and Uprooted have received lots of praise so I was pleased to have an opportunity to review this new standalone story.

Set in the snowy Eastern European forests long ago, Spinning Silver is the story of three young women. Miryem is the daughter of the village moneylender - who, sadly, lacks the instinct for his occupation. Wanda has no mother, and a father who mistreats her and her young brothers. Irina, whose mother has also died, is a member of the nobility, but just as much under her father's control as Irina: he plots to marry her off for political advantage.

Faced with starvation, Miryem takes a hand in her father's business. If he doesn't have the steel, the coldness, for the work, she does. But that coldness attracts attention, and when the King of Winter, the Staryk, demands a favour of Miryem, he sets in motion a chain of events that changes the lives of all three. Their stories then cross and interweave, each affecting the other in what are at the start, three parallel tales. I might almost say three parallel fairy tales, there are so many traditional elements here; of course the idea of spinning silver into gold, but also the witch's house in the woods, the castle of ice, the motherless child, and so on.

Yet for all the magical atmosphere Novik keeps things firmly anchored in practicality. Things like food, money, warmth matter here - as does the catastrophe that can befall a young woman when men man scheme to use her.

Politics and position at Court also matter - the need to anchor a fractious kingdom, provide an heir and keep the nobles in their place. And to raise taxes at a time when winter is growing in power and destroying the crops the people depend on...

Novik fills the book with well observed descriptions of things that are often left out in fantasy - profit and loss, trade and goods, as Miryem attempts to rescue the family business. The difference a little extra food of fuel can make, as Wanda shivers with her brothers in their cottage. The need to rebuild a city wall breached in battle and the money that makes that happen, how the job is financed and who the loan came from. She takes her time to show the amount of effort involved in making a dress, a mattress cover, a silver ring. The work must always come first.

And when the time comes that the protagonists - not just Miryem, but her parents, not just Wanda, but her brothers - are in danger, it's almost always these little, practical things that save them. In one place Novik takes nearly a page describing a piece of knitting, as part of showing how little positive acts fortify a house against the cold, the unnatural winter that's spreading through the land. Food is prepared and put on the table, logs found for warmth, and people survive. The wolf is kept away for another day, and sometimes that's enough.

Which isn't to say that larger things aren't afoot. There are true monsters here, and they have to be fought, but Novik blurs the lines so that it often seems to be a matter of setting the lesser evil against the greater, than of pure good. And even as the fight becomes fiercer, there are side agendas - such as Irina's father seeking to marry her off to the Tsar, and her own response. The struggle for survival and the politics of a small and unstable kingdom are never far apart. This is a complicated book, where good intentions aren't enough and can lead to real harm.

There are some particularly poignant themes here. There is the prejudice shown against Miryem and her family in their village for being Jewish, also embodied in the separate "quarter" - complete with guards at the gates - for the Jews in town: in both cases there is the ever present threat of violence, the of needing to escape, in the background even of prosperous and successful lives (let alone Miryem's scatty and impoverished parents). There is the position of an older unmarried woman, having to make a place for herself in a noble house because it's that or starve. There is the plight of the peasants, one bowl of soup or handful of logs away from death (and subject to Draconian punishment for taking an animal or a fallen tree from the forest).

It's am immersive and enchanting book - and that's even before adding in the mysterious, mercurial Staryk King, a proud and aloof character with a convoluted and difficult sense of honour that only very slowly unwinds so that we can understand what he's really doing. Think of a Mr Darcy, perhaps, - but with the power to bring winter in the height of summer.

Novak is good at worldbuilding and gives a real sense that this story is just part of a wider landscape - for example that witch's house has an awful lot going on that is never really explored (even while she makes clear that she's inverting the trope of the wicked house in the woods: this house is a welcoming place). There are, we sense, other stories here which could be told.

My only criticism would be a slight lack of distinction I felt, especially at the start, between Miryem, Irina and Wanda: while their circumstances are very different they do come across as very similar to in voice, something underlined by having each narrate sections of the book as "I" - there are also sections narrated by other characters, but fewer of them. (You may, though, think this actually emphasises how - for all the differences in status between the three - the fact that they are women in a patriarchal society puts them all very much in the same boat and demands that they each act with every last ounce of resource, ingenuity and courage.)

But that's a minor quibble, overall I enjoyed Spinning Silver a great deal. It's one to savour, with so much detail, so much suggested, that it begs to be read slowly and carefully. Novik dismantles the traditional fairy story, twists the parts round ninety degrees, and puts it back together again, adding a deep historical resonance and a telling mesh of race, gender and class issues and creating a study of power and marginalisation that is still truly and magically a fairy story.

Strongly recommended.

Novik has done it again! This is another stunning book, once I picked it up I found it difficult to put down! Weaving Rumpelstiltskin and Polish fairytales together Novik has crafted a breathtaking multi-perspective tale that keeps you guessing.

I was surprised by just how many perspectives were in this book. From reading the blurb I thought that it would have two perspectives, but by the end Novik has woven six different perspectives together to create a complex story. The new character’s perspectives are seamlessly introduced and Novik has created such diverse, and unique characters that you instantly know which character is talking with very little information. Which is such a win for me!

It’s amazing how Novik can make you feel for the antagonists in the book, they can go from these terrifying characters to something more human without you even noticing and suddenly you’re not even sure how you want the book to end. I loved exploring the world of the Staryk, the made such fascinating characters and I love that their magic was never fully explained.

This is such a beautiful, complex tale that I can’t tell you enough how much you should be reading this! Seriously! Pick it up!

I ended up spending many sleepless nights with it because thanks to it being an ebook I could just keep reading after turning the lights off and then one more chapter turned into three and then the book ended.

Long story short: I ended up loving this book as much as Uprooted! The beginning was a bit slow and since I went in pretty blind (I didn’t even look up the fairy tale Spinning Silver is inspired by!), I wasn’t sure what the story was really about until I was like 100 pages in. But once the story started properly it just got better and better!

Spinning Silver has multiple point of view characters, I believe I counted six in total at the end. In the beginning the only POVs are Miryem and Wanda, the girl Miryem hires to work at her home to pay off her father’s debt. Third really important POV character is Irina, who is a duke’s daughter who ends up being married off to a tsar who turns out to be more than a little questionable person. The three other point of views are more like side characters just offering a different angle to situations, but I did enjoy them as well. Funny story: I didn’t realize until I was like halfway through the book that the POV changes were indicated by pictures of items related to the characters (coins for Miryem for example). How slow can a person be?

Miryem, Wanda and Irina were also my favorite characters because they were really strong people in their own ways who had to make the best of bad situations. Especially the way Miryem and Irina grew into their roles (which ended up being surprisingly similar) and refused to be treated like trash was great to read. Especially Miryem and the Staryk king’s interactions were great whenever she managed to outsmart him. Wanda’s side of the story was a little different because she’s from a very poor home with an abusive drunk father, but the small event of Miryem hiring her ends up basically saving her and her brothers and I was just so happy for how their story ended up going. My one complaint about the book is that while Miryem and Wanda’s storylines got nice proper endings, Irina’s felt like it needed some more closure.

And then there’s the Staryk. I can’t stop picturing the Staryk king as the Night King from Game of Thrones but I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be less ugly. Their world sounded really cool and I wanted to learn more about it than could be explained in one book. They’re basically elf-like people made of ice and it’s really hard to figure out whether they’re meant to be the villains of the book or not, because they need winter to survive but permanent winter is also really bad for humans who need other seasons to produce food.

One thing that was interesting about this book was that the characters’ religions weren’t made up as they often are in fantasy books. Miryem’s family is Jewish, and the way they are treated by other people in the book is similar to how Jewish people have been treated in history (which is badly). Since I wasn’t very familiar with the history of Jewish people aside from WW2 things which everyone know from history classes, I ended up spending some time reading Wikipedia entries about things like antisemitism just to understand better why things are how they are in the book.

I would say that if you loved Uprooted you’re going to love Spinning Silver as well! Spinning Silver’s world felt a bit darker to me but it’s still just as magical. ❤

Having thoroughly enjoyed Uprooted, I had high expectations for Spinning Silver and it definitely did not disappoint.

Loosely based on the traditional fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, Spinning Silver starts with the story of Miryem, the daughter of an ineffectual money-lender. Miryem takes it upon herself to collect what it owed so that her family can escape poverty. As Jews, her family are already outsiders in their prejudiced village and Miryem must harden her heart to the resentful debtors. She finds success where her father failed, obtaining stacks of silver coins and turning them into gold. In doing so, she attracts the unwanted attentions of the intimidating King of the Staryk; icy, gold-hungry beings who live in a winter domain. Meanwhile, winter is choking Miryem’s world and refuses to turn into spring.

Miryem’s story intertwines with those of Wanda, motherless and mistreated by her father, and Irina, daughter of a duke, forced to marry a terrible Tsar. The story is told through first person narration, switching mostly between Miryem, Wanda, and Irina, but later adding in a couple of other characters. It was sometimes a little confusing when the narration changed, especially when the other characters narrated for the first time, but it was an effective way to tell the story and get into the minds of the characters.

I liked that the three main characters are all strong young women, who don’t shy away from trying circumstances. However, at times their traits seemed a little too similar; they all had to harden themselves to get through their trials, and none of them displayed much explicit warmth in their narration for much of the story. This meant I didn’t always feel as involved with their lives and fates as I would have liked, but there was some very effective subtle softening of both their inner and outer toughness.

The world of the story was wonderfully built and felt very real with magic of the Staryk overlapping the mundane winter-cloaked land. The Staryk and their kingdom are enchanting and menacing. I thought the importance of bonds, debts and the right words when making an agreement, were dealt with very cleverly. The story is delightfully woven together, slowly revealing layers to seemingly shallow characters.
There is plenty of darkness and twists in this wonderful fairy tale and I didn’t want it to end.