Summary: A late mediaeval Russian retelling of Rumplestiltskin.
I have said before that I am a fan of remakes. I like retellings of stories, fairytales in particular. I think that KB Hoyle’s series of fairytale retellings are some of my favorites. This is a retelling of Rumplestiltskin, but with a very Russian or Slavic perspective. My sample size is too small, but I think there may be a trend of more eastern European stories being retold. I got bogged down and never finished The Witch and the Tsar but I did finish the two novellas from Veronica Roth that are consciously based on Polish folktales and the Siberian folktale retelling of The Carver and the Queen Emma C. Fox and the Russian novel Laurus and much older, Orson Scott Card’s retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Enchanted.
Spinning Silver is set in Russia late enough that there were Tsars, but before any modern technology like trains. I don’t know if I would classify this as a feminist novel, but it is a female centered novel. There are four main female characters. The book opens with the peasant teen girl, Wanda. Her mother died and her father borrowed money from the local Jewish money lenders to pay for doctors. But her father spent most of the borrowed money on alcohol. Wanda had to grow up and care for her two younger brothers and avoid her father’s abuse.
Miryem is the daughter of a small village Jewish money lender. When her mother is sick and her father distracted, she starts to take over the business. She realizes she is good at business and collects the payments and turns the goods that she accepts in payment into other good and creates trade. She hires Wanda to care for her mother and do work around the house to give herself time to handle other aspects of the business. Miryem eventually connects back with her grandfather who runs a bank at the city a days ride away.
At that city, there is a Duke, who is competent and has grown in rank because of his work as a solider and his service to the Tsar. His daughter, Irina, is not a great beauty, but she is smart and she has been trained from a young age to understand the politics of the country and cares for the good of the people.
These three, along with Irina’s nurse, are the main characters. Wanda’s youngest brother Stefon, who is about 8-9 when the main story takes place are the main points of view for the book. Behind is recognizable medieval world, there is the fantasy world. A race of elven like people live in the mountain and claim the woods and the winter. And there is a fire demon that also shows up eventually.
Spinning Silver I think could be sort of classified as Romantasy, but unlike most of the book of that genre, here is no sex. It is a Happily Ever After book, and while I didn’t predict every plot turn, this was not a book that surprised me. I guessed much of the plot in advance. But I did like the characters. With the exception of the demon, who was a clearly evil character, the rest of the characters were mostly “misunderstood” rather than evil. And the longer we know them, the more we understand their perspectives.
I have been on a data processing run for work so having an engaging audiobook in the background that was not too difficult was a very nice change of pace. I will look up more books by the author. Spinning Silver was not on my radar, but it did get a lot of awards when it was released in 2019.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook