 Hey guys, it's Liana and I'm here today to talk about spinning silver by Naomi Novik. You all laughed when I said I was going to read another Naomi Novik book because I hated the first two that I read. I hated how brooded and I hated the education but I loved spinning silver. So ha ha ha ha ha ha. This book did it right. This book was exactly what I had wanted and hoped to get out of a brooded and if a brooded had been like this I would have loved it. Like I complained so much about how a brooded was trying to be this fairy tale-esque thing and totally missed the mark. It didn't have the atmosphere. It didn't really have this ancient folkloric feel. Like it seemed to think that it would or wanted to try to have. I don't know what happened between her writing a brood and her writing this but she got it right. She figured out how to do it. And then a brooded where we follow one perspective throughout and it's an insufferable perspective. We follow many many many perspectives and spinning silver almost too many. Like almost. It wasn't too many but it was close to too many. But the interweaving of different versions of the rumble still skin story and how she retold it and re-retold it and re-re-re-retold it and complexly layered the retellings and interwoven the retellings into each other. It was glorious and it was so feminist without being hamfisted or soapwaxy. The characters were complex and nuanced while still having this kind of like distant archetypal fairy tale quality. There were some romantic elements but it was at no point a romance. There were a few instances where having read a brooded I was like oh god if this turns into a romance no but it never did that. It like kind of hinted at that and teased at it which was just enough. Any more than that and it would have been shitty. I felt like it had this ancient folkloric feel which I really really really appreciated. So if you have read a brooded and you hated it like me do give spinning silver ago because like I had been told that by multiple people like oh I know you hated uprooted but I think you would still like spinning silver and I was like alright cause I mean I own this edition so I was like okay. And I did really really like it. I really really did. It had that like those earthy fairy tale vibes. It reminded me actually a lot of The Bear the Nightingale by Catherine Arden. The story no but the the vibes of it the feeling of this kind of like earthy magic that's kind of in everything this magical realism kind of where it's not so much that this world has like a wizard in it it's just that there's this like inherent magical quality to things that people just accept as part of everyday life. Like well of course there's spirits in the woods. Of course there are like evil magics that can make the winter come like that just kind of the world and and it just feels very folkloric for that reason because like in fairy tales it just kind of it's just like the natural state of things and it's a natural progression of events that a magical creature would pop up and offer assistance like well that's fairy tale logic for you. There was a lot of applications of like fairy tale logic where like what are the characters would their solution to something would be a fairy tale-esque solution where like it doesn't make logical sense but has that feeling of like tricking the fairy which is kind of how Rumpelstilts can use as a fairy tale where you're kind of tricking the the magical creature out of you holding up your end of the park and I did some interesting things to like point out biases and misconceptions and I guess kind of kind of racist things I guess. There's the sort of like the Jew money lender and how people like look down at that being dirty but are more than happy to use the services and to borrow money. The role of women, the how women are able to carve out some kind of form of agency despite the world not really offering it to them. The way the magic of silver was used in it I thought was very filled with imagery like a lot of things in it like it goes really picturing like this really fantastical beautiful fairy tale thing a lot of the time the way it was described like I was visualizing a lot more with this than I have I don't generally visualize very much when I read I was visualizing a lot with this so it really made me feel like I was like tumbling into this fairy tale world of snow and ice and silver and dark magics and feminism so I had a really great time with this I really really did and like reading it in December wasn't kind of the perfect time to be doing it I was listening to the audiobook so I was actually cooking a meal for my friend for New Year's and I'm Latvian so I was cooking like a lot of traditional Latvian foods while listening to it and it just was the perfect experience because like all the smells and hoos around me I was like cutting beats and I had cabbage on the stove and like all the smells around me and then hearing this this story about these like the kind of housework they're doing the kind of food they're eating the whole thing I was just like oh this is like the perfect time and space to be experiencing this so that worked out quite nicely so yeah and it is a standalone which like I mean in generally speaking for fantasy is nice because you're not committing to like a whole series this is it and it's told exactly like it's not too long or too short it's the right length tells the stories it means to tell leave some things hanging but not in a way where you're like kind of for a sequel just kind of like the nature of like life is never that conclusive so leaving the threads open to like you can imagine where these where these characters lives will be going towards after the events of this book you imagine a future for them just also very feel it very tale-less the kind of like and now they live happily ever after like it's not a cheesy ribbon on it happily ever after ending but it ties in it up in a way where you're like and now I see where their lives go on from here so well done well well done let me know in the comments down below if you have read Naomi Novik's books and how you felt about them I got and I I guess it just goes to show that just because you might hate an author's books does not mean you will hate all of that author's books I feel like two different people wrote these books and I'm kind of glad I read it in this order because if I read this now I'd be like oh well then I'll brood it will be great too and I'd be I was already quite disappointed based on the reputation that book had and based on knowing my own reading tastes and what should appeal to me but having now seen how well she can execute this I would be mega uber-duper disappointed without brood it a lot of people love both so let me know in the comments down below your feelings and thoughts about this type of storytelling how authors can have a variety of types of story and they could appeal to different readers if you had a similar experience to me or a different maybe you've loved up rooted and hated spinning silver that's an option feel like if you really love to brood it then you could very easily have the opposite taste of me anyway let me know all the things I post videos on saturdays other random times as well but definitely saturdays so like and subscribe and i'll see you when i see you bye