![]() Arden neatly establishes parallels between Vasya's internal struggles, between attachment and freedom or the human world and the spiritual one, for example, and those taking place in the world around her.Ī striking literary fantasy informed by Arden's deep knowledge of and affection for this time and place.Īt a luxurious secret facility in the Hudson Valley of New York, women who need money bear children for wealthy would-be mothers with no time for pregnancy. The trilogy leads up to the Battle of Kulikovo, which many consider the beginning of a united Russia. Fans of Russian mythology will be pleased to find that Baba Yaga puts in a cameo appearance to straighten out some of the complicated genealogy. ![]() ![]() Arden keeps the narrative fresh by sending Vasya questing into fantastic realms, each with its own demanding set of rules and its own alluring or forbidding geography, and by introducing new “chyerti,” demons or spirits, including an officious little mushroom spirit who indiscriminately plies Vasya with fungi, some edible and some distinctly not. Among the inhuman are the warring brothers Morozko, the winter-king with whom Vasya conducts a conflicted romance, and Medved, a demon addicted to chaos. Among the humans are Vasya's sister, Olga, compromised by her desire for wealth and position her brother, Sasha, a monk with a taste for the military life Grand Prince Dmitrii and corrupt priest Konstantin. Because the novel starts with a bang where the preceding volume left off, with Moscow nearly burned to a crisp by a Firebird imperfectly controlled by Vasya, readers are advised to backtrack to the two earlier books rather than attempt to sort out all the characters and backstory on the fly. In a luxuriously detailed yet briskly suspenseful follow-up to The Bear and the Nightingale (2017) and The Girl in the Tower (2018), Arden's historically based fantasy follows heroic Vasya-a young woman with a strong connection to the spirits of the place where she lives-as she attempts to save her family and her country from evil forces. Nuri wants to be the strong one, but Lefteri subtly, slowly shows the reader how deep his wounds are as well.Ī well-crafted structure and a troubled but engaging narrator power this moving story of Syrian refugees.Ī satisfying conclusion to a trilogy set in medieval times in the area on the verge of becoming Russia. Lefteri says in her author’s note that the book was inspired by her volunteer work in a refugee camp in Athens, and Nuri’s story rings with authenticity, from the vast, impersonal cruelties of war to the tiny kindnesses that help people survive it. Along the way, he also becomes the guardian of Mohammed, a lost boy about the same age as Sami. The war leaves Nuri and Afra no choice but to leave, but her blindness and emotional trauma mean that he must be her caretaker as well as grappling with the bewildering navigation to another country. In Aleppo, Afra was an artist Nuri was the titular beekeeper, a job he loved, in business with his cousin and dearest friend, Mustafa. Nuri narrates the book its chapters alternate gracefully among the golden prewar past, the struggle to gain legal refugee status in England in the present, and the journey in between, a long nightmare of chaotically crowded refugee camps, life-threatening sea crossings, and smugglers eager to exploit them. ![]() The novel follows Nuri and Afra Ibrahim as they escape from Aleppo and make the perilous journey to Britain after their son, Sami, dies. ![]() Politics are barely mentioned in the book, though-when war has destroyed your home and livelihood, blinded your wife and killed your young son, the reasons for that war lose their meaning. This novel’s characters are fleeing a different war, the current, devastating civil war in Syria. Lefteri ( A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible, 2011) is the child of refugees, raised in London after her parents fled Cyprus in the 1970s. The human stories behind news images of Syrian war refugees emerge in a novel both touching and terrifying. ![]()
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