The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden Series: Winternight #2
Publisher: Del Rey (2017)
eBook (363 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Also by this author: The Bear and the Nightingale, The Winter of the Witch
Also in this series: The Bear and the Nightingale, The Winter of the Witch
Reading Challenges: Read 2020
Synopsis
The magical adventure begun in The Bear and the Nightingale continues as brave Vasya, now a young woman, is forced to choose between marriage or life in a convent and instead flees her home—but soon finds herself called upon to help defend the city of Moscow when it comes under siege.
Orphaned and cast out as a witch by her village, Vasya’s options are few: resign herself to life in a convent, or allow her older sister to make her a match with a Moscovite prince. Both doom her to life in a tower, cut off from the vast world she longs to explore. So instead she chooses adventure, disguising herself as a boy and riding her horse into the woods. When a battle with some bandits who have been terrorizing the countryside earns her the admiration of the Grand Prince of Moscow, she must carefully guard the secret of her gender to remain in his good graces—even as she realizes his kingdom is under threat from mysterious forces only she will be able to stop.
Find the book: Goodreads, Amazon
My Review
I have been wanting to read The Girl in the Tower since I finished The Bear and the Nightingale in 2017. This year, I finally accomplished the goal of reading this second book in a series that I love. I have to say, I loved this book so very much.
This series by Katherine Arden is a Russian folklore retelling set in the fourteenth century in the area we now call Russia. The Girl in the Tower resumes directly where The Bear and the Nightingale finished. We are left in the aftermath of the previous novel with lots of questions still unanswered.
The first section of the book takes the point of view of Vasya’s brother Sasha in Moscow while the second section is Vasya’s point of view which is happening simultaneously. After these first two sections, the rest of the novel continues in the same timeline. This is the first thing that needs to be stated because it really makes a difference.
The book opens with Sasha and the Grand Prince of Moscow, Dimitri, on the hunt for bandits that are terrorizing the villages of Rus. They seem to run into dead end after dead end until Vasya arrives with three girls she rescued from the bandits.
Then we jump back to how Vasya got to this point from the end of The Bear and the Nightingale. We see Vasya’s interactions with Morozoko, the frost demon and god of death. We do not fully understand Morozoko, even at this point, as we are seeing him through Vasya’s eyes and there is so much she does not know.
Now Vasya is with her brother Sasha and their cousin, Dimitri. Vasya is pretending to be a boy since she was riding the countryside by herself and fighting bandits and everything.
When they arrive back in Moscow, we realize that there is a lot more to the story that we aren’t aware of… but Vasya and Sasha don’t know everything either. So we are left with a lot of questions as the plot continues to unfold: Who is the ghost of the girl in her sister Olga’s tower? What does Kasyan really want in Moscow? Is Chelubey who he says he is?
The biggest question, however, is can Vasya save everyone? And then we are also left with wondering who exactly Morozoko is to Vasya.
If you enjoy fantastical stories that are set in medieval times, you will likely love this book as much as I did.
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