Spinning Silver

This was a good solid 4-star read. I found that it dragged a little in the middle, but I was pleased enough by the ending to come away with a good impression of it.

Miryem is a moneylender's daughter who can turn silver into gold. Well, at least, she knows how to barter her silver well enough to get a gold coin back for each one. Unfortunately, her father the moneylender is too gentle and kind to collect his debts, so to prevent her family from going cold and hungry, she has to harden her heart and go out to run his business for him. Because of an ill-timed boast to herself about it in the forest, Miryem attracts the attention of the king of the Staryeks, a race of winter fae people who have been casually terrorising mortals for generations. Together with Wanda, the daughter of one of Miryem's debtors, and Irina, the daughter of a duke, Miryem has to find a way out of a supernatural conflict that threatens the lives of their people.

The characters of this book, love them or hate them, are really quite spectacular to behold (and not always pleasantly so). The female characters are generally strong, but I found them a little muted compared to the male ones, probably because they're more stable. Miryem is kind and can be generous, but generally she's calculative with her money. Wanda is unfortunately lacking in education, but she's physically strong and does what needs to be done to protect her brothers. Irina is... whew. Despite being a duke's daughter, she's downtrodden but grows increasingly... almost ruthless and manipulative as the book goes by. After all, she is the only one who can actually outmaneuver both Mirnatius and Chernobog. Honestly, at the end of the book when Irina was making these decisions to let Chernobog into the Staryek kingdom just to save her people, I was the most afraid of her than I was of the actual flame demon from Hell.

The male characters here are out of control! Wanda's father, usually known as “Da” when we see the story from her perspective, is a pathetic bullshit excuse of a human being that you would find yourself thinking violent thoughts about (and honestly, I found myself wishing his death had been even more violent than it was). But the two biggest characters here are Tsar Mirnatius and the nameless Staryek king. I spent the first half of this book thinking that these are some crazy toxic male characters, and indeed there's no denying that they are toxic. But by the end of the book, after learning more about them, you may find yourself re-assessing that. In any case, I like that they both had to be saved, quite physically, by Irina and Miryem respectively. I feel like the happy ending may not be to everyone's tastes, but I think the part of me that likes fairytales and happy endings very much enjoyed the way it played out, which is why I liked the book so much.

The narrative structure was OK, but may not be to everyone's fancy. It's told from a first person POV, but it switches fairly frequently between characters. We get at least 2 characters' POVs every chapter. There also isn't a clear indication of whose perspective we're reading from, which is probably a deliberate decision, but that also means you need to pay more attention to the context of what you're reading to figure out whose voice you're reading now. I thought that the POVs would be fixed between the 3 main female characters, but I was surprised later on with the POVs of some other side characters (namely Stepon, Mirnatius, Magreta - especially Mirnatius. I wouldn't have expected to see the POV from one of the "villains" of this book).

If you live in a country that experiences winter, this is a great book to whip out and read during that season. It's a book that takes place in and almost celebrates winter to some extent, with a dark fairytale vibe and a fairytale ending.