Katherine Arden also made us focus on Rus’ in the early XII century, during the Turco-Mongol rule. demons, witches and Vasya’s abilities to see these beings. Then they might have believed that I was dangerous.”Įven though there is a great attention to the fantasy element – i.e. “You shouldn’t have told them I was a girl. The different names might be confusing for someone who is not familiar with the demons’ names, but there is a handy Glossary at the end of each book, which to be frank, I’ve never had to use, but I imagine that it must be very helpful. The third book in particular, really showed the diversity of demons, introducing and giving personality to various beings – Vodyanoy, Bannik, Lady Midnight, and, my favorite, Ded Grib. About Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, and of course Morozko! No winter could have passed without me reading about Morozko or watching the cartoon and the movie adaptation of this folktale. My very first children’s books were filled to the brim with the stories about Vasilisa the Beautiful and Tsarevich Ivan. Slavic folktales are very dear to my heart, as these are the stories I grew up listening to. I’ve never read a book written by a non-Russian (or non-Slavic) author that would have felt so authentic.

If you are a big fan of Slavic folklore or books inspired by Slavic culture, this trilogy is the best one out there! Katherine Arden really did an impeccable job studying old folktales to the smallest details.

“Of bears and sorcerers, spells made of sapphire and a witch that lost her daughter? No, of course not. I’m also joining the Top Ten Tuesday meme today, currently curated by “That Artsy Reader Girl”, and today’s topic is Reasons why I love…, and my take on it will be 5 Reasons why I love the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden! 1 – SLAVIC FOLKLORE! But I still wanted to talk about the book series I finish, so I thought it would be a good idea to give you 5 reasons why that particular series was good and force you all to read it! 😉 I’m starting a new type of posts of my blogs! I always struggled to write reviews for sequels – not many people are interested in reading a review for a 2nd, 3rd or 10th book in the series when they haven’t even started the series yet or aren’t caught up to the point where they can freely read the review and not being afraid of spoilers.īesides, how much information is enough to convey my thoughts and not spoil the previous books?įor all of these reasons, I decided to only review the 1st books in series, unless the sequels are ARCs and will require my creativity to convey my emotions without spoilers.

The winter night trilogy