Reading Materials: The Bear and the Nightingale (book review)

Winter is cold and dark.  The winds howl.  It is the end of time.  The old tales tell that one gives offerings and performs the rites to ask for aid to survive the dark until spring.  Are these tales true or are they demons scratching at the edge of the mind?  Is magic real? Or is it a part of fairy tales meant to pass the cold night along?

The Bear and the Nightingale is an entrancing 2017 novel by Katherine Arden.  The tale starts with a fairy tale told during a cold winter night to pass the time.  That is where it begins.  It sits at a series of crossroads, a historical fiction, yet a fantasy novel.  It is a coming of age story.  Yet it is also a tale about the conflict between Christianity and Russian pagan beliefs.

Two Roads Yet One

Even the heroine, Vasya, often is a being between so many things that could otherwise define her.  She keeps the monsters at bay and is the wild maiden of her village.   She also is the daughter of a lord and helps her family maintain the village that comprises their lands.  The setting of medieval Rus cements The Bear and the Nightingale to a clear time and place.  Throughout the story Vasya is often the focus of frustration, being born two of worlds and feared for it.

What I found most intoxicating of the story is how it oft-echoed beats of fairy tales.  One can find the tropes of the wicked stepmother, or the auspicious birth, albeit in their own new tunes.  Key to Vasya's childhood is her relationship to classic Russian mythical creatures.  She interacts with a murderous Rusalka or makes offerings to the hearth-bound Domovoi.

As a heroine Vasya chooses to be kind, to try her best to help everyone she meets.  She does this rather than use her secret knowledge to manipulate or intimidate.  Monster, human or otherwise.  However, she fails to bend to the demands of a patriarchal, medieval society she is born to.  It sees her as little more than a good to be traded off.  Or worse, to be sent away to some convent out of sight, out of mind, to live as a nun.

Vasya defies this.  Not through finding her power in the supernatural.  Instead, she pulls from her own knowledge, and the positive choices she's made.  This is refreshing to my fantasy story mind.  If only because it is not some sword or tool she finds in the other world that saves the day.

No.  Vasya saves the day by refusing anything but herself.  Even then, she pays the price.  There is always a price to change.  Even change you don't want.

The Old Winter Magic

The magic of The Bear and the Nightingale is a subtle song.  It echoes medieval magic stories.  Almost everything that one could call magic in the novel is protection.  Offerings to spirits.  Talismans of protection.  Promises that keep the monsters at bay.

All this magic is protective first.  Only when one starts demanding or wishing for things do they pay a horrible price.  This is the old magic.  Something whose rules are about paying a price.  Being polite and earning protection against something hidden in the night.  Being willing to believe something that isn't true is true.

Winter is cold and dark.  Would making that offering of bread help the hearth burn hotter?  Or does performing the old rite protect against monsters?  Or do they do nothing?  Maybe that dark is cold and empty.

Or maybe the magic still will help.  Even if it has been in oneself the entire time.