And indeed, misfortune begins to stalk the village.īut Vasya’s stepmother only grows harsher, determined to remake the village to her liking and to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for marriage or a convent.

Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring. Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Arden beautifully blends folklore with an unforgettable atmospheric fantasy and gives a vibrant female heroine for you to fall in love with.

I was completely drawn into Katherine Arden’s imaginative historical fantasy series describing the conflict between Christianity and paganism in 1300s Russia. When Vasya’s mother dies and her father remarries, her stepmother forbids the pagan practices, the tweaked household spirits cannot protect them from a growing evil. She loves to hear tales of spirits who live that protect their home from evil, especially of the Frost Demon. In medieval Russia, Vasya and her family live in the far north, where winter lasts most of the year. Audiobook Length: 11 hours and 48 minutes

The bear and the nightingale book