At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.
After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.
And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.
As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

I’m usually such a sucker for historical fiction fantasy novels, but Russian folklore, a fairytale-inspired story with a heroine who fights social standards and woman-disparaging society to protect her family? JUST take my money. I’m still in a haze from the magical experience that was reading this book, the harmony of nature, magic and tales as old as the forest – this book is perfect for cold days and indoors adventure under the blankets.

The Bear and the Nightingale is set in the heart of feudal Russia, precisely, a village called Lesnaya Zemlya. It is a story of tales that are older than the men: home spirits, forest demons, and witches. Vasya’s mother died at her childbed, knowing her youngest daughter will have her magic and giving her life so Vasya could live. Her father has never quite forgiven her and, seeing the wild thing Vasya had begun, knew he’d have troubles finding her a husband. Upon the arrival of Konstantin Nikonovich, a priest from Moscow, determined to drive out the “old ways” out of his people and return them to God, old evils are starting to stir. Why now? Well, people are afraid, and house spirits have no one to take care of them. There used to be a balance and Vasya knows it, but she can’t do a thing when she’s the only one who can see them. The dead are starting to walk again and two brothers seek a chance to wage war, yet the only one who can save the village is the girl they’d rather burn on a pyre.

Merely thinking about this book envelops me in a warm, steady feeling of satisfaction and eagerness, that only a good read such as this was can provoke. It was besotting, Arden slow tension-building and eerie ambiance of old demons and new families. Almost everything about this book was enchanting, from perspective plot taking my mind apart to fierce and self-indulging Vasya fighting her way against the world’s injustice - just that it wasn’t that slow. I felt like I was mentally completely exhausted in the time book got to the real plot and I couldn’t help but think that it definitely could have been shorter. I love a good introduction and thorough backstories, but if there’s not some action to heat the things up, it just gets dry and dull. That’s the only reason my rating is 4 stars because when things got in motion, there was nothing that could stop me from devouring this book.


I’m still asking myself if I really liked the book itself so much, or is it Vasya who bewitched and blinded me for all the things I might have not liked about it. She’s THAT type of my character, a wild queen of woods and horses, a badass warrior left on her own. She’d always been kind, but people calling her witch for being different turned that kindness into determination and fierceness. She had magic but she never forgot where she came from – her interactions with her family were the best ones by far, and her and Kolya’s dynamic is an older-brother-sister bond at its purest. Vasya is there for all of the girls who had to fight their way through the mud and were still told they weren’t enough. Ma’am take me with you.