Thursday, December 20, 2018

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Visual Description: The cover is wintery in shades of blue, gray, silver, and white, with some objects golden. In the lower quarter part of the cover is the author's name "Naomi Novik' in gold. Below in dark blue is the title "Spinning Silver". Both are in a Renaissance, Old World font. Below both is a small terrain of a mountain and some trees. Above the title and author's name is a large frame with jagged glass and a column with three shelves with crystal formation jutting up from the top on it's left side. In the mirror is a strong boned young woman with loose brown hair, blue eyes in a gray dress, her sleeves shover to her shoulder, and she's dropping silver coins into her outstretched palm and the coins slowly turn from silver to gold with the coins in her outstretched hands golden. In the top shelf of the column to the left is a silver bag of silver coins, the second shelf is full with a handsome man with long white hair and strong features with no expression on his face, and at the bottom shelf has golden coins spilling out from it. 
Publishing: July 10th 2018, Del Rey
Page Count: Kindle Edition 480 pgs.
Find the Author: Website

"Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders...but her father isn't a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife's dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers' pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed--and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold. But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it's worth--especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand." - Nabbed from Goodreads

Ok so...Spinning Silver is NOT a sequel to UprootedMy hopes got high when I saw the cover and how similar it was to Uprooted. Alas, it is not. But - it is a sister novel in spirit!

Novak does what she does most excellently and twists and re-crafts an ages-old tale. With Uprooted it was the dragon who steals maidens. A tale that we have all read, thought of, and known. With Spinning Silver we get a completely re-imagined spin on Rumpelstiltskin. And while (if you watched Once Upon A Time) a re-imagined Rumpelstiltskin isn't a foreign idea to me - her approach as it was in Uprooted is original and enticing.

There are three young women at the center of this spinning taleThey are not instantly heroic girls with perfect hearts and admirable quirks. They are flawed, perfect, skilled, unskilled, soft, and hard in different ways.

Meryem watches for years people taking from her family with no intent of returning what they borrowed. Watching while they had luxuries and necessities that her family didn't. Her parents are absolutely loving and nurturing and kind but they have no back-bone when it comes to moneylending. Correction - they're great at the lending of money but they're terrible at the getting the money back. It hardens her and makes her a steely and clever moneylender. She appears to be far more cold than she truly is.

“They would have devoured my family and picked their teeth with the bones, and never been sorry at all. Better to be turned to ice by the Staryk, who didn't pretend to be a neighbor.” - Meryem

Wanda is the poorest and most vulnerable of the three young women. Her mother passed away years ago leaving two younger brothers, a string of dead babies long buried, and a very abusive father. Wanda is ignorant but not in a dangerous way. She is taken in early in the novel as a servant to pay off the debt that her father owed Meryem's family and she sees them as 'magic'. Their book-keeping is magic and when she learns it then she knows herself that she is now a magician, Meryem's ability to turn a profit is magic, and even Meryem's mothers ability to find a relative and a new friend in a string of strangers are magic in Wanda's eyes. Just as much magic as the elfin ice people who make the winter longer are. She struggles to form a loving connection with her brothers and her journey with the ability to love and to trust and to express love is beautiful to watch.

“I looked at Lukas. He did not look very pleased, but he did not look very sad either. He was only giving me a considering eye. I was a pig at the market he had decided to buy. He was hoping I fattened up well and gave him many piglets before it was time to make bacon.” - Wanda

Irina's the plain daughter of a beautiful, partially Staryk mother who died when she was a child. She's completely overlooked and underrated by her father and step mother. She's withdrawn and cool - so much so that her own nurse from infancy doesn't know if Irina loves her as she loves Irina until later in the story. I don't want to give too much away but she becomes a force to be reckoned with, a true Tsarina who embraces the responsibility to care for her people above all else. Irina's survival instincts have no chill and she is calculating without any shame or hesitation.

“The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father's house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I'd had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I'd never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.” - Irina

Their stories weave in and out of each other until they firmly tie together in a intricate knot at a height of the plot. I adore that the girls aren't perfect and have realistic flaws. They aren't bad but they aren't entirely good except they are. They are easy to root for, even if they're doing things that contradict each other because each one has a relatable motive.

But, its good to remember going into this story - that this is not the story of girls finding each other and banding together to defeat the big bad. Each girl is powerful in her own right and finds her own victory and losses.

The Spinning Silver world, in comparison to Uprooted, is more-so in our world than a fictionally created fantasy world often is. And it is even more fleshed out by the rare, accurate, and authentic representation of Judaism. Meryem and her family are Jewish. And Novak does not shirk from facing anti-Semitism straight on without looking away. I think, it's easy for writers to...write around horrible realities - especially so when writing Fantasy. But, to write a Jewish family and community in a medieval Russian-esque land without writing anti-Semitism would be lazy and false. One part (again trying not to give too much away) where Meryem is literally forced to acknowledge that a decision she is going to make is entirely self-serving and that it could very much take something that her people might need in the future to keep their lives is a profound moment, gutting moment of reality.

With Uprooted their religion was vague and entirely mystic and often times kind of useless. Religion in Spinning Silver is very familiar and very important - as it was in real medieval times in our world. The Christianity is familiar and usual but the focus on Judaism (Meryem and her family are Jewish) is refreshing and much needed in the genre. Or, well, any genre. There are not a lot of Jewish heroines out there and definitely not many in the fantasy medieval genre.

As for the ACTUAL magic of the world - The Staryk are, I believe, a completely original creation. The Staryk are cold creatures (literally made of ice) who possess their own culture of debts and worth and words and promises that are almost impossible to translate into the language of humanity. They live in another world that only connect to ours when winter comes. It drenched in silver, in cold, in winter. They come and hunt and terrorize humans. They crave gold above all else and they are making winter longer, and longer, and longer. It is them - their King to be more specific - that come for Meryem so that she can turn their silver into gold. And it is by her own human words that she unwittingly binds herself to her fate. Again - they have this whole almost-too confusing culture of words, worth, debt, and repayment.

There are other threats that weave around Meryem and her Staryk plot that aren't even alluded to in the synopsis. Irina's married off to the Tsar (thanks to some Staryk silver magic) who is harboring a terrible, terrible secret. Wanda and her brothers find this magic cottage in the woods where it seems invisible people live. There's a murder. A wedding. Actually like three weddings and like four proposals (attempts included). And I'm not giving away a quarter of what happens by revealing these details.

With winter settling in for the long haul (I'm writing this literally at like 1 a.m. on Midwinter Solstice) Spinning Silver is one of my recommended reads. The only truly negative thing I have to say about it is the way its formatted or the lack thereof. There are so many narratives and none of them are labeled. And they are all written in first person. It's a testament to Novik's writing skills that you can follow along and there are icons breaking them up as they shift characters but it's still confusing. I do think it's clever to for-go titling each one with names in a tale based on Rumpelstiltzskin. Names are very important to the Staryk! BUT its' confusing! And threw me for a loop. Although I must note that I was reading the e-book on my Kindle and I have read accounts where reviewers mention that each character perspective has a different icon assigned to them. The icons did not change in my copy. I would totally not even complain about the lack of titling perspective shifts if that was so in my copy because that sounds clever and cool. So watch out for that! But don't let it deter you from diving into this story because it is well worth the read.

I hope the holidays have and do treat you well this year. If I don't post until after the first of the year (likely with my posting rate, lol) - please have a safe, happy, and warm New Years!

Good reading always,

Jess

“There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad with all my heart. I hope there will always be.” - Fav. quote! Read and find out who says it and to whom. lol. 



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