Spinning Silver

I had previously read Uprooted, and adored it, so I was eager to get my hands on this book as soon as it came out. I was very excited to see it as a Book of the Month choice for July, and quickly made it my pick!

I received the book while I was at Anthrocon, so I didn't get a chance to sit down with it until the day after it officially released. I proceeded to read straight through the entire book because it was SO. GOOD. Novik writes absolutely ENTHRALLING fairy tales. And in Spinning Silver, she has written fae as beautiful, alien, capricious, and as absolutely bound by rules as they should be. Doing a thing three times, even by normal means, gives one the power to ACTUALLY do the thing; in Miryem's case, turning the Staryk's silver into gold (by creative buying and selling) means she gains the power to LITERALLY turn silver into gold. Which then gets her into the trouble the rest of the book is built on.

One of my favorite lines was very near the end of the book, about the Staryk palace:

“The Staryk didn't know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was only to be expected from people who didn't take on debts and were used to entire chambers wandering off and having to be called back like cats.”

My only real quibble with the book is that it shifts viewpoints between at least five characters, and doesn't start their sections with names or anything, so it takes a few sentences to figure out who's talking. It never takes too long, but it did occasionally make me go “Wait, who is this....ah, okay.”

The plotlines weave in and out of each other's way for most of the book before all colliding into each other at the end and showing how everything connects. I was definitely confused on occasion, but it was that enchanting Alice-in-Wonderland kind of confusion more than actual puzzlement. The book is, by turns, a mix of Rumpelstiltskin, Tam-Lin, Winter King vs Summer King, Snow Queen, and a little Hansel and Gretel. I love seeing elements of so many fairy tales woven together and yet still remaining recognizable.

And the ending! Oh, the ending was absolutely, marvelously perfect.

I loved this book, just as much as I loved Uprooted. I can't wait to see what fairy tales Novik spins next!

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.