This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
Vasilisa is the youngest child of a well-to-do landowner in the Russian wilderness. Her mother died when she was a baby, but she has her older siblings and her family’s nurse to care for her. She has something of the supernatural to her, as did her mother’s mother, and she loves to be outdoors, talking to the spirits of the yard and forest and water.
Her father decides one day he should choose another wife, and he goes down to the court of the grand prince, his late wife’s half-brother, to look for a suitable woman. He comes home, however, with the prince’s daughter, a young woman who would much rather be secreted away in a convent. She feels she sees demons everywhere and only feels comfortable in a church.
When the young woman becomes the mistress of the house, she sees the household spirits and forbids anyone from honoring them. While most people have converted to Christianity, they still keep the old ways of setting food aside for the spirits who keep them safe.
The change upsets Vasilisa the most because she can see that the spirits are becoming weak; crops are failing and bad things are happening everywhere. And when her stepmother and the priest who has come into town do all they can to either get Vasilisa married or put in a convent, she must decide whether to defy them and even her loved ones — to protect them all from a great danger. As she does so, she finds that the stories she’s heard her whole life about the winter demon and the Bear are all too true. And she will play a role in the stories herself.
The Bear and the Nightingale is rich in detail in its setting, bringing to life a time in centuries-past Russia of folk tales and superstitions, of bitter-cold winter and brief summers, of magic. It is lyrical and complex and beautifully written. Unfortunately, I found the story only so-so. It just didn’t grip me. The whole last part of the book where Vasilisa is drawn into the world of the winter demon and his evil brother didn’t work well for me. But many people have really loved it.
Rated: Mild. There’s hardly any language; sexual content is mostly brief, mild references to the father being intimate with his new young wife. Violence is only mild.
Click here to purchase your copy of The Bear and the Nightingale on Amazon.
