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sophia_sol) wrote2022-09-25 10:55 am
sophia_sol) wrote2022-09-25 10:55 am
The Winternight Trilogy, by Katherine Arden
(Trilogy consists of: The Bear and the Nightingale, The Girl in the Tower, The Winter of the Witch)
I read the first book in this trilogy for the first time four years ago, and liked it a lot at the time, but wrote a VERY incomplete review of it. So I reread it before reading the sequels, so I would remember what actually happened in it! And then I read the sequels.
And now that I've read the whole trilogy I'm....hm. Evaluating the three books all together, I like it a lot less than I thought I was going to. And the thing is, I don't know WHY!!! It's doing so many different things that I generally find extremely compelling, and yet when all put together, I am left feeling cold.
It's a book set in medieval Russia, fairy tale inspired, about the tension between Christianity and the traditional beliefs, featuring a young woman with interesting complicated relationships with her family and also with the god of death. And it's well written, and the main character has a complicated morality but is dedicated to doing what she thinks is the right thing to do, and the winter vibes are powerful and delicious. You would think that this is my jam! And yet.
I mean, yes, there were some aspects of how the story was put together that did not agree with me. Like, Vasya spends most of the second book crossdressing as a boy, and she is very clearly experiencing The Genders about it, but the author is completely and utterly unaware of this fact in a very "I'm cis and have never considered what it means to be a gender" kind of way that feels like it belongs to a bygone era of crossdressing novels. And there were some aspects of how this played out that were really uncomfortable.
(and the books are also extraordinarily heterosexual........except for one brief moment where the god of chaos and the evil priest kiss. Because obviously gayness is something that only belongs to antagonists. SIGH. I would honestly be happier if I just thought the author somehow didn't know gay people exist.)
Also, although I am all about those delicious human/personification-of-death ships, this particular god of death felt so very human that it didn't really feel like that's what it was doing! And yes, there were watsonian reasons why he was more human than he ought to have been, but that doesn't actually make it satisfying to me.
But honestly these are things that would, in other books, not actually stop me from enjoying other parts of a book, if the other parts were good. So idk. *enormous shrugs* If you have read these books and have any thoughts about why it might not have spoken to me, then please talk to me about it!
Other thoughts:
I did, throughout the whole read, keep finding myself thinking "This is like spinning silver except spinning silver did it so much better. Why am I not just rereading spinning silver instead."
I kept being thrown by Konstantin not being the character type I expected him to be, because....okay. When I was a teen, I began reading the Alvin Maker books by Orson Scott Card. They are, um, extremely baffling and horrible, and although they began with some compelling worldbuilding, they went very off the rails remarkably quickly and I think I gave up like halfway through the series. But they contain a character who plays a similar role to Konstantin: a priest/minister type person who thinks he is hearing god talking to him but is actually hearing the devil, and doing what the devil wants. And that dude from the Alvin Maker books is a very different person from Konstantin! But I kept expecting Konstantin to be him! Anyway Konstantin's terrible but in a different way, and I could never quite hold it in my head what kind of way that was, lol.
I read the first book in this trilogy for the first time four years ago, and liked it a lot at the time, but wrote a VERY incomplete review of it. So I reread it before reading the sequels, so I would remember what actually happened in it! And then I read the sequels.
And now that I've read the whole trilogy I'm....hm. Evaluating the three books all together, I like it a lot less than I thought I was going to. And the thing is, I don't know WHY!!! It's doing so many different things that I generally find extremely compelling, and yet when all put together, I am left feeling cold.
It's a book set in medieval Russia, fairy tale inspired, about the tension between Christianity and the traditional beliefs, featuring a young woman with interesting complicated relationships with her family and also with the god of death. And it's well written, and the main character has a complicated morality but is dedicated to doing what she thinks is the right thing to do, and the winter vibes are powerful and delicious. You would think that this is my jam! And yet.
I mean, yes, there were some aspects of how the story was put together that did not agree with me. Like, Vasya spends most of the second book crossdressing as a boy, and she is very clearly experiencing The Genders about it, but the author is completely and utterly unaware of this fact in a very "I'm cis and have never considered what it means to be a gender" kind of way that feels like it belongs to a bygone era of crossdressing novels. And there were some aspects of how this played out that were really uncomfortable.
(and the books are also extraordinarily heterosexual........except for one brief moment where the god of chaos and the evil priest kiss. Because obviously gayness is something that only belongs to antagonists. SIGH. I would honestly be happier if I just thought the author somehow didn't know gay people exist.)
Also, although I am all about those delicious human/personification-of-death ships, this particular god of death felt so very human that it didn't really feel like that's what it was doing! And yes, there were watsonian reasons why he was more human than he ought to have been, but that doesn't actually make it satisfying to me.
But honestly these are things that would, in other books, not actually stop me from enjoying other parts of a book, if the other parts were good. So idk. *enormous shrugs* If you have read these books and have any thoughts about why it might not have spoken to me, then please talk to me about it!
Other thoughts:
I did, throughout the whole read, keep finding myself thinking "This is like spinning silver except spinning silver did it so much better. Why am I not just rereading spinning silver instead."
I kept being thrown by Konstantin not being the character type I expected him to be, because....okay. When I was a teen, I began reading the Alvin Maker books by Orson Scott Card. They are, um, extremely baffling and horrible, and although they began with some compelling worldbuilding, they went very off the rails remarkably quickly and I think I gave up like halfway through the series. But they contain a character who plays a similar role to Konstantin: a priest/minister type person who thinks he is hearing god talking to him but is actually hearing the devil, and doing what the devil wants. And that dude from the Alvin Maker books is a very different person from Konstantin! But I kept expecting Konstantin to be him! Anyway Konstantin's terrible but in a different way, and I could never quite hold it in my head what kind of way that was, lol.
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Yeah, I felt similarly about Vasya and it was frustrating. Especially on second thought I remember not finding the ending very satisfying. But I read it three years ago so I forgot the details.
(Btw, I wrote a missing scene with Sasha and Dmitrii: The Cost of the Second Lie /self-promo)
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And that's a great look at Sasha and Dmitrii's relationship!
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My theory is that the first book is excellent and holds up, at least partly because it benefits from an almost locked-room setting. At heart, it's something of a family drama, and Arden has a really, really good grasp on all those dynamics and can really drive home the personal horror of this priest turning a tiny, close-knit community against a scapegoat. But, the second two books open the scope up to kingdom-wide and world-wide consequences, and Arden was just not quite skillful enough yet to manage the same kind of emotional intensity on those scales, and the more frequent shifts away from Vasya-POV as a result of the wider cast of characters reveal her weaknesses (eg gay people) more often.
The book it reminded me of was less the Spinning Silver/Deathless complex, actually, and more of Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown -- the Solovey relationship and the relationship with Death in particular. So I think that, with that as my comparison, it worked better for me than if I'd been holding it up to Spinning Silver.
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That's interesting that you'd compare it more with The Hero and the Crown -- for me they feel like very different books, but perhaps I'm focusing on different aspects of the McKinley than you are! But also the authors just have very different vibes imo, and McKinley's style is so distinctive to me.
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I'm also not sure what it was, but I do think the second book made some odd choices about where to start the story and where to focus it.
Also, hmm, that's interesting about Konstantin! He was reminding me of something but I couldn't place what. But I've read several Alvin Maker books, and while I don't remember any details (other than the concept of "knack" and William Blake being a character -- that was a thing, right? I didn't dream that up? -- maybe that was the connection niggling at the back of my head.
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And ohhh boy I do not remember a lot about the Alvin Maker books but I just googled it and William Blake is indeed a major character, under the name Taleswapper, which, SURE, why not!!
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RIGHT XD Taleswapper! I don't actually remember what he did, if anything, but IIRC me stumbling on the Alvin Maker books coincided with me reading a lot of Blake, and is inclusion was boggling but intriguing, which is probably why I remember him.
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I did, throughout the whole read, keep finding myself thinking "This is like spinning silver except spinning silver did it so much better. Why am I not just rereading spinning silver instead." I had this reaction as well! Which is a bit unfair, but Spinning Silver had a ton of interesting and complex relationships between its female characters (and also just more female characters period), which I really missed here.
The other thing that bugged me quite a bit was the depiction of the Turco-Mongol/The Golden Horde. I really hated that pretty much every other character were written as nuanced and had depth (ex. Anna and Konstatin), but the Mongols were one note barbarian misogynist jerks who also threatened to rape Vasya repeatedly. I understand that given the setting being Russia breaking out of Mongol control and gaining independence means they had to be the bad guys, but not only is the depiction Not Good it's less interesting than it could have been! From what I remember (I could be getting the cultural timeline wrong? pls corrrect if so) the Mongols gave their women more power and freedoms than similar empires around that time. Other than warrior queens like Khutulun, Mongol women were expected to be able to ride a horse and shoot w/ bow and arrow since they were a nomadic people, and they were often involved in raids as well, usually handling logistics. It would have been much more interesting if Vasya was finally able to meet other women who were able to ride and fight like her and considered it a matter of course, but they were also the enemy.
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YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
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YES!
And oh my gosh you are SO right about the way all the characters get to have nuance except for the Mongols and that is INFURIATING. And your ideas about Vasya having interesting complicated relationships with Mongol women whom she can relate to but who are her enemy is just like.....exactly what this story needed and now I am so so sad that that wasn't a thing.
I did do some googling about Mongol history because I couldn't remember the timelines either, and like, most of the stuff I could find that was explicitly writing about gender experiences amongst the Mongols was focused on the time 1.5-2 centuries earlier during the height of the empire. But the Golden Horde had a female monarch from 1370-71, which is squarely in the time period of the Winternight books, so I think that women having more freedom in the Mongol context than among the Rus' is still relevant!
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and she is very clearly experiencing The Genders about it, but the author is completely and utterly unaware of this fact in a very "I'm cis and have never considered what it means to be a gender" kind of way that feels like it belongs to a bygone era of crossdressing novels.
Yeah....
I did, throughout the whole read, keep finding myself thinking "This is like spinning silver except spinning silver did it so much better. Why am I not just rereading spinning silver instead."
Oh, absolutely.
Anyway Konstantin's terrible but in a different way, and I could never quite hold it in my head what kind of way that was, lol.
Ha!
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Although it's underage, so don't feel obliged to read. Not that you would be obliged to read it under any circumstance, of course. : )
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