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Aug. 25th, 2019 10:05 amSpinning Silver is one of those books that I put off reading for ages precisely because I was so confident I would like it; I bought a hard copy because I felt pretty sure I'd want to own it, and then, as is inevitably the case when I buy hard copies of books, it sat on my shelf for ages while I desperately tried to keep on top of my library pile.
Anyway now I have finally read it and indeed I did love it, and was glad to have saved it for a time when I really needed a good book, so this is really a triumphant story about how well I know myself and my own tastes!
Spinning Silver is an extremely Jewish-Russian fantasy, told in a variety of first-person viewpoints, primarily those of our three heroines:
Miryem, the daughter of a sweet but very incompetent Jewish moneylender, who in reaction has decided that being sweet is a waste of time and become an extremely competent moneylender, much to her parent's concern; unfortunately has now become so very competent that the king of the local evil ice fairies keeps turning up to ask her to turn his fairy silver into gold
Irina, the daughter of a businesslike Russian nobleman, who wants to marry her off to the handsome young tsar, who, alas, is almost certainly evil; this plan seems unlikely to succeed until Miryem's adventures provide an injection of fairy silver into the proceedings
Wanda, the daughter of Miryem's impoverished and abusive neighbor, who starts working for Miryem's and her parents in order to pay off a moneylending debt and soon starts leveraging this into a plan to escape her father; her problems are mostly unrelated to ice fairies except inasmuch as Miryem's family begins to absorb her and her siblings and thus their ice fairy concerns naturally become relevant, but the emotional arc of her and her brothers learning slowly and painfully how to be a family to each other is extremely good
I love all of these women, but most especially Miryem, who is cold and clever and pragmatic and very angry most of the time, and whose (very fairy-tale and very Jewish) ability to both follow and manipulate the letter of a bargain both dooms her and saves her. The gears of plot and character and fairy-tale logic are all extremely well-balanced -- and were the cockles of my heart warmed when the entire dramatic climax turned out to revolve around Miryem's promise to attend her cousin's Jewish wedding? YES THEY WERE, EXTREMELY.
(I am also extremely impressed with Novik's mastery of voice in this book; it's all first-person and all the heroines and all the side characters sound very distinctly different.)
All that said: look, I'm totally fine with the two very dramatic fairy-tale monster romances presented in this book, they are very fairy-tale and don't really take up a lot of emotional space, but ... I also still .... don't understand why Naomi Novik pretends she's never heard about lesbians ...... Naomi! There were three heroines in this book. Three! You could perfectly well have kept one fairy-tale monster het, if you felt it was really important, and still thrown all the rest of us a bone.
Anyway now I have finally read it and indeed I did love it, and was glad to have saved it for a time when I really needed a good book, so this is really a triumphant story about how well I know myself and my own tastes!
Spinning Silver is an extremely Jewish-Russian fantasy, told in a variety of first-person viewpoints, primarily those of our three heroines:
Miryem, the daughter of a sweet but very incompetent Jewish moneylender, who in reaction has decided that being sweet is a waste of time and become an extremely competent moneylender, much to her parent's concern; unfortunately has now become so very competent that the king of the local evil ice fairies keeps turning up to ask her to turn his fairy silver into gold
Irina, the daughter of a businesslike Russian nobleman, who wants to marry her off to the handsome young tsar, who, alas, is almost certainly evil; this plan seems unlikely to succeed until Miryem's adventures provide an injection of fairy silver into the proceedings
Wanda, the daughter of Miryem's impoverished and abusive neighbor, who starts working for Miryem's and her parents in order to pay off a moneylending debt and soon starts leveraging this into a plan to escape her father; her problems are mostly unrelated to ice fairies except inasmuch as Miryem's family begins to absorb her and her siblings and thus their ice fairy concerns naturally become relevant, but the emotional arc of her and her brothers learning slowly and painfully how to be a family to each other is extremely good
I love all of these women, but most especially Miryem, who is cold and clever and pragmatic and very angry most of the time, and whose (very fairy-tale and very Jewish) ability to both follow and manipulate the letter of a bargain both dooms her and saves her. The gears of plot and character and fairy-tale logic are all extremely well-balanced -- and were the cockles of my heart warmed when the entire dramatic climax turned out to revolve around Miryem's promise to attend her cousin's Jewish wedding? YES THEY WERE, EXTREMELY.
(I am also extremely impressed with Novik's mastery of voice in this book; it's all first-person and all the heroines and all the side characters sound very distinctly different.)
All that said: look, I'm totally fine with the two very dramatic fairy-tale monster romances presented in this book, they are very fairy-tale and don't really take up a lot of emotional space, but ... I also still .... don't understand why Naomi Novik pretends she's never heard about lesbians ...... Naomi! There were three heroines in this book. Three! You could perfectly well have kept one fairy-tale monster het, if you felt it was really important, and still thrown all the rest of us a bone.
