Hot and Cold

Feb 2020
Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik – Pan, 2019
* * *
This is another Slavic-influenced fairy tale that starts off as a clever spin on Rumplestiltskin. Miryam is the daughter of a uselessly kind-hearted moneylender who takes on his debt collection duties to buy medicine for her ill mother and proves to have a talent for it. Her ability to strike profitable deals attracts the attention of the Prince of the Staryk, an ice elf with a gold obsession. Meanwhile, in another part of the kingdom, a nobleman schemes to marry his daughter Irina to Mirnatius, the handsome young Tsar. But Mirnatius has a dark secret, as Irina soon discovers.

While I enjoyed the story, it didn't appeal to me as much the author's previous work, Uprooted. The story structure seemed less clean, with the Rumplestiltskin elements supplanted by a different tale that didn't dovetail entirely elegantly. And the somewhat male-hostile gaze evident in Uprooted is more forcefully expressed here. Of course I have absolutely no problem with the main viewpoint characters being strong young women who are doing it for themselves - indeed, hurrah! - but the absence of a single likeable or competent man in the cast, while an understandable reaction to the othering mysogyny of most traditional fairy tales, seemed a step too far in the other direction.