THE READING RHEUM: THE WINTER OF THE WITCH (2019)

In my reviews of the first two books in Katherine Arden's fantasy-trilogy set in medieval Russia, I registered some minor complaints about the thoroughness of Arden's conception of her villains, in contrast to the rich detail she provided for main heroine Vasya Petrovna, her supporting characters, and the mysterious death-god Morozhko the Winter-King. While I maintain that Koschei, the main villain of the second book, could have used some improvement, the culminating book of the trilogy expands greatly on both "Medved the Bear," the evil spirit of the first book, and on his sibling-like relationship to Morozhko. I believe that Arden was doling out just enough information in the first book to establish that particular conflict, while the culminating novel provides greater context to the status of both deity-like beings, who seem to exist in a world in which gods spring forth from the beliefs of human beings.

A complaint I had about Book 2 was that I felt the character of Vasya's brother Sasha, who was given a detailed backstory in Book 1, was reduced to being a purely reactive presence when he once more encountered his sister. Since Sasha became a Christian monk at a young age while his sister allied herself to the pagan mysteries of her people, I thought Arden neglected to develop how each character represented different facets of the Russian experience of religion, with respect to both the early folkways and the more piety-based beliefs of Orthodox Christianity. Arden never does use Sasha and Vasya as opposed spokesmen for their belief-systems, though arguably another monk, the subordinate villain Konstantine, fills that role, at least partly. But in WINTER it's clear that though Arden wasn't interested in a philosophical comparison of belief-systems, forming a "detente" between the two conceptions may be the defining narrative trope of the entire trilogy. In fact, in Arden's "author note" at the end of WINTER, she makes clear that she grounds her theme in her interpretation of Russian culture.

There are some minor faults in WINTER as well: after raising the prospect that at some point the sorcerously-inclined Vasya may be obliged to induct her young niece into the mysteries of witchcraft, but this plot-point dwindles at novel's end because there's so much else going on. But Arden delivers on the more important plot-elements, not least the ambivalent romance between Vasya and the immortal, inhuman spirit called Father Frost. I confess I didn't foresee how Vasya would ultimately deal with her opponent Medved, and since I knew little about Russian history, I didn't anticipate that Arden was reworking certain real-world medieval events into a fantasy-tapestry. I don't know what if any reaction the trilogy may have received from actual Russian readers. But Arden's syncretic union of Russian history with famous myth-figures-- Father Frost, the Firebird, Baba Yaga-- might be viewed as parallel to J.R.R. Tolkien's desire to use magical fantasy to formulate a "myth of England."

THE READING RHEUM: THE GIRL IN THE TOWER (2017)

 

I was stoked enough by Katherine Arden's THE BEAR AND THE NIGHTINGALE to invest time in the second part of the trilogy. Though I've been a member of a couple of book groups for years, giving me exposure to various authors of the current century, it's been extremely rare that I've liked the first novel in any trilogy enough to follow up on its next chapters.

THE GIRL IN THE TOWER follows immediately on the events of NIGHTINGALE, focusing upon the exploits of protagonist Vasya Petrovna, a young woman seeking to chart her own destiny. Vasya is forced to depart from the township she's occupied with her family for her entire life, and to strike out on her own, in part because her talent for seeing the spirits of households and woodlands have caused her people to label her a witch. Of course, having consorted with Morozhko, the spirit of winter and death, also puts Vasya somewhat beyond the pale of ordinary experience. Her adventures implicitly have a modern feminist subtext, in that Vasya does not wish to be confined to the only two dispositions of young women in medieval Russia: lawful marriage or the convent. Yet, in marked contrast to the majority of feminist writers, Arden causes the reader to identify with Vasya's plight on a personal level, rather than using the heroine as a chess-piece to illustrate an ideology.

Unfortunately, other characters in TOWER have less organic substance than Vasya, and many of them exist largely to play limited roles in the "game" of the novel. Possibly I had this reaction because in NIGHTINGALE, Arden conjured forth a rich tapestry of Vasya's home life and her relations with all of her family members, even with the history of the mother who died birthing her. In addition, the woodlands around the township seemed alive with strange spirits, and dominated by an ongoing conflict between the demonic "Bear" of the title and his brother-deity Morozhko. 

In TOWER, though, Arden places her heroine in a position where her supernatural gifts are at a disadvantage. Because medieval Russia exercises Muslim-like restrictions on the freedoms of women-- which is what the metaphor of "the girl in the tower" references, rather than any particular event in the narrative-- Vasya can only seek her destiny by masquerading as a boy. In this guise, circumstances force her to visit Moscow, where she encounters two of her family members, a brother and sister, who have become highly placed in the court of the current Tsar. Though in NIGHTINGALE the brother was strongly sketched even though he only appeared in a few early chapters, this time he has no character-arc beyond reacting to Vasya's predicaments. Additionally, Konstantin, a secondary villain of the first novel, appears in TOWER as well, but his development is also superficial.

I complained in my first review that the principal opponent was not well defined, and this is even more so of TOWER's main villain, who unlike the Bear is fairly well-known in major Russian folktales: the sorcerer Koschei the Deathless. Arden accurately reproduces the primary story-tropes associated with the character, but he never comes alive, least when the author tries to tie him into the mysterious maternal side of Vasya's family. Yet once Arden finally gets all of her chess-pieces in the positions needed for the big climax, she does deliver a killer conclusion, with a "eucatastrophe" perfectly in line with Tolkien's theory about the purpose of fantasy.

At some point I will probably read the third book in the trilogy. I speculate that its strongest myth-trope will be the same as that of the first two books: that of the relationship between involving the impossible relationship of Vasya and the Spirit of Death, inhuman, and yet given a patina of humanity by his contact with the young woman. 

THE READING RHEUM: THE BEAR AND THE NIGHTINGALE (2017)

THE BEAR AND THE NIGHTINGALE is the first part in a trilogy by Katherine Arden, based upon Russian folklore and set in medieval times. In contrast to the majority of 21st-century fantasy and SF novels I've read in recent years, this one is distinguished by a strong interaction of both plot and characterization.

Most of the action takes place in a compound near a rural village, where the local boyar ("lord") Pyotr Vladimirovich ministers to the people under his beneficent rule. Arden devotes almost as much time to describing the members of Pytor's family as one would see in one of the classic Russian novels of the 19th century, but the one family member crucial to the story is Pyotr's daughter Vasya (loosely based on a character from Russian folklore, one Vasilisa). 

Though the village, like the rest of Russia, subscribed to the Orthodox Christian faith, old pagan ways are covertly observed by the peasants, and Vasya herself finds that she has a talent for seeing the miniscule sprites that inhabit the house and stable. She grows to womanhood while her sisters and brothers are maneuvered into marriages that are good for the family's betterment. In addition, circumstances force her widowed father to make a second marriage to a high-placed royal named Anna, who becomes something of an "evil stepmother" to Vasya. However, Vasya's main opponent is the "Bear" of the title, a malignant entity that feeds on fear and seeks to fill human hearts with terror. The Bear subverts an overly gullible Christian monk, thereby using Christian ethics to reduce the power of the house-spirits-- thus placing mortals within the Bear's control.

Though the Bear is Vasya's principal opponent-- she even summons the various spirits of house and forest against the evil force near the climax-- the Bear himself is not that well defined. Arden does much better in depicting the chancy relationship between the young proto-witch and Morozhko, the spirit of winter and death, and brother to the Bear-spirit. Arden certainly patterned the bulk of NIGHTINGALE after various Russian tales of "Father Frost," and some of her other conceptions seem more derivative of modern fantasy-tropes. Incidentally, the "nightingale" of the title is a bird whom Morozhko transforms into a horse that he gives to Vasya, though said bird-horse doesn't really play a big part in the novel. In all likelihood Arden wanted to foreground the horse for future stories, just like some of the details about Vasya's family aren't important here but may become important to the other two parts.

Vasya ends the novel in a non-fairy-tale manner, for she remains an independent woman at novel's end, rather than completing some romantic arc. In fact, though Arden probably did not intend to draw parallels with popular fiction about "girls and horses," it may be no coincidence that though Vasya can talk to many types of spirits, she communes only with one type of animal: horses. Maybe a better title for the novel would have been THE WILD GIRL AND HER STABLE OF STALLIONS.