The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel
Series: Winternight Trilogy, Book 1
By: Katherine Arden / Narrated By: Kathleen Gati
Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
So sue me: I liked it!
WOW! I just checked out other reviews over on Amazon (It NEVER changes my mind but is often a nifty springboard!) and holy cow! Apparently this book miffed the good golly night outta Christians. I can kinda sorta see why as our mortal bad guy is (mis)guided by a voice he thinks is God, and he thinks reprehensible thoughts and makes choices, performs actions that are quite reprehensible indeed. Plus, our young heroine Vasya’s stepmother is a raving fanatic.
But, see: I just got that these two were unwell creeps and their mode of release was Christianity. I do NOT think aaaaall Christians wanna send young maidens to convents or to stone them to their deaths. To me it was just a story, folks, as in a twisted tale. That said, however, if you’re twitchy about your faith, by all means, avoid this like the plague, cuz the priest Constantine is a jerk, and the stepmother raves like all get-out.
So, what we have is young Vasya, a girl with the sight, who communes with sprites of the household, of the stables, of nature, who refuses to kowtow to the wandering priest who, sent to their village, thunders to his flock that all must stop serving their old gods, that the Christian faith that they say they are takes precedence and that God will damn them all to hell otherwise blah blah blah. (Seriously, I’m zoning on his name right now, but there was a fire & brimstone priest when I was a kid, and though he screeched and pretty much frothed at the mouth, I didn’t take all his condemnations to heart…)—Vasya refuses to believe their souls need to be saved, as she’s pretty sure of God’s love, even if they do put food and milk out for the little spirits.
Due to an altercation where Death might take his son, Vasya’s papa promises that he’ll give his youngest daughter an amulet that will bind her to Death. Many years go by before Vasya’s nurse does this for him, and it’s all very hush hush. And that sets up a battle between good and evil; Death vs. the “God” that the priest Constantine has been unwittingly serving.
There’s good and evil, as previously stated, there are warnings of Beware the Dead (And there’s one scene with the Dead that creeped me out mightily)…
-AND- this book is chockfull of animals, namely horses, who are characters in their own right. So though my Animals Pick of the Week, Ice Dogs, didn’t pan out, this book, The Bear and the Nightingale came through and gave me some good ol’ animal sweetness.
There were plenty of poor or middling reviews topping as “most helpful” over yonder, saying not much happened, or that it started strong and turned into YA/Chick-lit, and I s’pose I can understand why they say the first but not the latter. Author Katherine Arden went on to write a middle-grade fiction work, and it sounds like it kinda has the same creep-factor, but the Chick-lit? I’m pretty sure a man wrote that one, and bully for him for expressing his opinion. But other than having horses that talk, and a female protagonist who’s a strong lead, uhm, nope. I’m QUITE familiar (*blush*) with chick-lit, and I feel I can say with good authority that this is just a sometimes twisted, always fanciful bout of black vs. white, with only a few shades of grey providing an unanticipated twist here and there.
Kathleen Gati did a fine job here with her narration. I mean, here’s a whole Russian-flair thing, 11+ hours, and she carried all of it off super well. Where it was creepy, her tones provided the atmospheric spookiness, where it was emotional, she fearlessly turned that in also. So no problems with her at all.
This was a fun foray into the magical, some whimsical stuff, plenty of darker stuff as well. Budding romance? Maybe. Keep in mind this is part of a trilogy so it all ends rather wide-open. I hooope romance doesn’t become a big thing. Tho’ I dearly love a fair to middling romance, I’d much rather be spooked out when I seek a book like this.
And lemme tell ya: I was listening to the grand good v. evil climax scenes, and I baaaarely noticed that I’d been waiting over 45 freakin’ minutes for the bus. I call that some nifty story crafting, worthy of eVENtually seeking out the second book in the trilogy.
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