This is the kind of book that one might wish to inhabit forever.

This is not a sequel, nor is it set in the same world as Uprooted it is a sister book similarly grounded in Slavic folklore and culture. Posted about my SAB listing a few weeks ago about not showing up in search only when you entered the exact name. Readers will be impressed by the way Novik ties the myriad threads of her story together by the end, and, despite the book’s length, they will be sad to walk away from its deeply immersive setting. Three years after her last novel left fairy tale conventions, well, Uprooted, Naomi Novik returns with a spiritual successor, Spinning Silver, another fantasy inspired by age-old legends. Her work inspires deep musings about love, wealth, and commitment, and embodies the best of the timeless fairy-tale aesthetic. Novik probes the edges between the everyday and the extraordinary, balancing moods of wonder and of inevitability.

Secondary characters-a peasant boy, a duke’s daughter, a tsar-eventually become narrators, weaving interconnections that feel simultaneously intimate and mythic. Novik ( Uprooted) begins the story through the eyes of Miryem, a Jewish moneylender’s daughter, whose pride in her ability to wring payments from borrowers draws the demanding attention of the terrifying, otherworldly, and rules-bound Staryk, who are ruled by a wintry, gold-loving king. This gorgeous, complex, and magical novel, grounded in Germanic, Russian, and Jewish folklore but richly overlaid with a cohesive, creative story of its own, rises well above a mere modern re.

Novik spinning silver