*CAUTION this post may contain fangirling.
Hello my bookish friends. Happy Wednesday. You are half-way through the week, yay. I’m going on holiday on Saturday so I can’t wait to get to the end of the week. Thank you so much to everyone who commented on my earlier post on Book Blogging pressures. It’s really nice to see I’m not the only one.
Today’s post, ‘Emma chats…’ is the start of something new for my blog, to bring back my enjoyment of blogging and love it once again. This idea came to me only yesterday, I wanted something I could post regularly about that I talk about all things books, authors and even random things. It might contain recommendations, my favourite series, or something I just finished reading and want to rant about even. So I hope you enjoy it.
Yesterday I finished this trilogy, The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden, with the last books The Winter of the Witch. I discovered this series when I wasn’t in the mood for YA, I wanted something different so I went to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section in Waterstones. Clearly I’ve been living under a rock. The Bear and the Nightingale is stunning inside and out, I’m not sure what pulled me too this particular series, my mum picked it out when we were shopping. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone else pick you a book when you’ve been reading so much of the same lately.
With such a strong female character, a witch, bad-ass yet fragile, Vasilisa Petrovna, who’s weird, strange, a cast away from her very religious family for seeing things, that is out of her control. Beings, Chyerti, that no-one else can, that can ward against evil and protect the house with offerings. She is Marked and fallen for a winter-king who takes the dead and a twin, a monster, than can turn the living mad. A religious country stuck in the ways, and completely foreign and blasphemous to anything of unnatural elements. Vasilisa is constantly branded to be evil when her very existence can build ‘Rus’ and its various worlds, as a united country.
When I first started the series it was like I was in a totally different world and it’s been a while since I feel like I’ve completely escaped in a book. It takes you into a whole new world, a new country, new language, new layers to such an intricate and flawless fantasy. You can’t helped but be completely taken into the plot line. Simply stunning. (That phrase I tend to use a lot. But it’s true.) This series is just so magical, extraordinary, a fairytale.
Recommendation time!
I want to find something like this! I’ve heard that Naomi Novak is very good. I loved this Russian Fairytale and sad to see it end. One of the best fantasy series I’ve picked up this year.
Have you read this series? I’d love to know. See you soon.
