This book was a very creative venture but really wasn't my cup of tea. Everything about it was pretty out there, and I struggled to finish it.

Well written, makes me want to read russian fairy tales.

I enjoyed it although it ended up dragging in the middle for a bit. I know fairy tale tasks must come in threes but it still was a bit long. I enjoyed the ending and how it came full circle.

Spoiler

Though I guess the swans never went back to normal

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I'm giving this 4 stars with an explanation. You really need to know the tale of Vassalisa before reading this.

I didn't realize this was a Baba Yagga retelling until I was halfway through. Prior to realizing this, I was confused and struggling through it a bit, after I realized it I enjoyed it much more.

I'm not really sure what to say...the magical aspects were weird but the storyline kept me guessing enough that I wanted to stay with it. I really liked the retelling aspects and the underlying struggle between good and evil, including Vassa's internal struggles with doing the right thing. The ending was anticlimactic and confusing, but I still enjoyed the story as a whole.

Two favorite quotes:

"Harmony has no better preservative than oblioviousness" (Pangolin)

"Because being human is a hard lesson to learn and you really have to start young and practice constantly if you're going to stand a chance of getting good at it." (Vassa)

This book makes no sense in the way Alice's Adventures In Wonderland makes no sense. By the end you'll discover that this is a beautiful (albeit disgusting) story about grief, and family, and growing up. I cried.

I really don’t like DNF-ing books and that’s why it took me so long to decide to move on from this book. I tried. I really did. But this book is a DNF at page 49.

There might be a future for us someday but it’s not today. Or tomorrow.

So I don't totally understand what happened in this book, although to be fair I was kinda speed-reading so I could move on to another book I'm much more excited about. It's still getting three stars for sheer creativity and its Russian source material (not Western Europe, yay!), but if I'm going to be honest, I didn't understand the plot at all and at times it was creepy in a way I did not like.

First of all, being thrown into a magical world without evening being told it would happen threw me off from the beginning. Maybe I'm the only one who didn't expect it, but starting in a place called "Brooklyn" where such strange, magical things are happening but no one bats an eye was too much for me somehow. Sometimes things would happen and I'd be like...what?...why? So, that sums it up, basically. I did appreciate the ending, though I won't spoil anything, but the entire middle was just too much. I wish I'd liked it more.

2.5?

I don't know. I was just kind of disappointed in this.

I'd rather have Vasya from The Winternight Trilogy. This was... a lot but also not a good a lot. Lol This isn't the first retelling of Baba Yaga and the like that just didn't work for me. I applaud the attempt, but... it's like Porter read a few Russian fairytales and then threw a little bit of them together and lost some of the main points. Oh well.