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Miryem’s father and grandfather are moneylenders, but her father’s hesitancy to actually go and collect on debts has left their family in dire conditions. Seeing her mother sick pushes her to act: She goes out and starts firmly collecting money. Miryem then finds she has quite a knack for trading and making good deals, turning smaller items into larger ones and smaller sums of money into larger ones.
Wanda is the daughter of one of the debtors. Her father sends her to Miryem’s house to work every day to help pay off his debts. Wanda works hard and finds she has opportunities to even earn some money to save for herself.
Irina is the daughter of a duke. Though it’s long been expected a young lady of higher rank than she would marry the young tsar, because of a series of events involving Miryem’s gift and the duke’s aspirations, Irina finds herself tsarina.
Miryem’s skill leads her to boasting, and she catches the attention of the king of the faerie-like Staryk, who live in an icy world that’s always winter. Irina finds out soon after her marriage that the handsome tsar has a horrible secret. Both the Staryk king and the tsar are causing dangerous reverberations in the country where the young women live. All three women face difficult choices and huge responsibilities as they have to figure out how to protect themselves, their families and their country’s citizens.
Naomi Novik’s story, steeped so much in old-world lore and rich in setting, had much the effect on me as her previous, similarly set book, Uprooted. It took me a while to read because I didn’t want to breeze through and miss any of the detail. It’s not simple, easy reading; many of the important plot points must be inferred through a series of other steps. I had to go back and re-read to make sure I had some things right. I appreciated the characters here and their backgrounds, their motivations, their growth and decisions. I didn’t love this as much as Uprooted; that one (based, very loosely, on the tale of Beauty and the Beast, as this story is based, very loosely, on Rumpelstiltskin) had more of a compelling love story and a really poignant moral behind it. But I did appreciate reading it. Novik is a gifted writer.
Rated: Mild. There’s really no language, and sexual content is nearly nonexistent. There are some weddings after which there are wedding nights in which there are only references to the marriages needing to be consummated, but the consummation doesn’t occur. Violence is mild; there are some deaths and references to some abuse by a father to children and wife. Killing and fighting happens but isn’t too gory.
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