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A review by thebakersbooks
The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden
5.0
5/5 stars — definitely a book/series I'll read again and share with all my friends!
First things first: this review is spoiler-free for The Winter of the Witch, but will refer or allude to spoilery bits from the first two books. (If you haven't read the first two parts of the trilogy, go do that and then come back here!)
Now, the second thing: The Winter of the Witch was a perfect way to kick off the new year. I read both the previous books in December and this one rose easily to their five-star standard. The Winternight trilogy has been a fairy tale given the scope of an epic; its final installment lived up to the promise of its predecessors in dramatic range and emotional depth.
The Girl in the Tower ended with Moscow in turmoil and Vasya struggling to walk a narrow path between the Russia of her family and that of the unseen chyerti. With war on the horizon and insidious forces eroding her support from within, Vasya reaches out to allies from both worlds. The brilliance of this story has always come when those allies aren't enough and Vasya is forced to stretch beyond her own limits, and this book proves no exception. While discovering the secrets of her family and her past, Vasya herself becomes a force to be reckoned with.
Katherine Arden has woven many points of view - nuanced protagonists, complex villains, and detailed side characters - into a tapestry in which each thread is as carefully constructed as the whole. By the end of The Winter of the Witch, it's finally possible to understand how deftly those narrative shifts have been handled.
It's rare for me to find each book in a series better than the one before it, especially when the first book sets such a high bar. That was the case here, though. I'd be hard pressed to think of anything I didn't enjoy about the Winternight trilogy as a whole and this book in particular. I recommend The Winter of the Witch to readers who enjoyed the previous novels; the whole series will appeal to fans of Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver and anybody who likes their historical fantasy with a strong dash of myth and magic.
** I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review **
First things first: this review is spoiler-free for The Winter of the Witch, but will refer or allude to spoilery bits from the first two books. (If you haven't read the first two parts of the trilogy, go do that and then come back here!)
Now, the second thing: The Winter of the Witch was a perfect way to kick off the new year. I read both the previous books in December and this one rose easily to their five-star standard. The Winternight trilogy has been a fairy tale given the scope of an epic; its final installment lived up to the promise of its predecessors in dramatic range and emotional depth.
The Girl in the Tower ended with Moscow in turmoil and Vasya struggling to walk a narrow path between the Russia of her family and that of the unseen chyerti. With war on the horizon and insidious forces eroding her support from within, Vasya reaches out to allies from both worlds. The brilliance of this story has always come when those allies aren't enough and Vasya is forced to stretch beyond her own limits, and this book proves no exception. While discovering the secrets of her family and her past, Vasya herself becomes a force to be reckoned with.
Katherine Arden has woven many points of view - nuanced protagonists, complex villains, and detailed side characters - into a tapestry in which each thread is as carefully constructed as the whole. By the end of The Winter of the Witch, it's finally possible to understand how deftly those narrative shifts have been handled.
It's rare for me to find each book in a series better than the one before it, especially when the first book sets such a high bar. That was the case here, though. I'd be hard pressed to think of anything I didn't enjoy about the Winternight trilogy as a whole and this book in particular. I recommend The Winter of the Witch to readers who enjoyed the previous novels; the whole series will appeal to fans of Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver and anybody who likes their historical fantasy with a strong dash of myth and magic.
** I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review **