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A review by absireads
Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter
3.0
This retelling of the Russian fairy tale 'Vassilisa the Beautiful' started strong, but dragged by the end.
The first half of the novel was entirely compelling: the writing is beautiful throughout; at first, the mystery of BYs and the trials set for Vassa felt high-stakes and intriguing, and for the first 2/3rds of the novel the pace clipped along.
Yet, somewhere around the second night of Vassa's work for Babs, the novel began to fray for me. Whatever sympathy/empathy I'd been building with Vassa stalled. The scenes grew too surreal and the characterization took backseat to dream-like plot, which meant that when character moments happened they didn't feel earned.
Weirdly, the author shoe-horned in a small love triangle between Night as motorcycle man, Tomin, and Vassa, which was unnecessary and didn't really work with the story. It felt like some editor somewhere told the author that love triangles were necessary in YA novels, and they're really not. Why on earth did Vassa care so much about Tomin (beyond their shared humanity)? He did nothing to prove to me that he was brave or kind, etc. And why did Tomin want to date Vassa? Very insta-lovey, for no plot payoff.
And why did Vassa care about Babs so much at the end? Baba Yaga in Russian folklore IS an interesting ambiguous character, so she could have been a very complex primary antagonist -- but in this book, she really wasn't. She killed with relish and had dead hands as servants. She turned innocent women into swans. She served her functional purpose (in the fairy tale sense), but with no ambiguity or real depth. Why did Vassa see ambiguity in Babs at the end?
Ultimately, a really creative retelling of Vassalisa, gorgeous writing, but not well-paced and with some baffling characterization (and/or shallow characterization) and unnecessarily convoluted plot choices.
The first half of the novel was entirely compelling: the writing is beautiful throughout; at first, the mystery of BYs and the trials set for Vassa felt high-stakes and intriguing, and for the first 2/3rds of the novel the pace clipped along.
Yet, somewhere around the second night of Vassa's work for Babs, the novel began to fray for me. Whatever sympathy/empathy I'd been building with Vassa stalled. The scenes grew too surreal and the characterization took backseat to dream-like plot, which meant that when character moments happened they didn't feel earned.
Weirdly, the author shoe-horned in a small love triangle between Night as motorcycle man, Tomin, and Vassa, which was unnecessary and didn't really work with the story. It felt like some editor somewhere told the author that love triangles were necessary in YA novels, and they're really not. Why on earth did Vassa care so much about Tomin (beyond their shared humanity)? He did nothing to prove to me that he was brave or kind, etc. And why did Tomin want to date Vassa? Very insta-lovey, for no plot payoff.
And why did Vassa care about Babs so much at the end? Baba Yaga in Russian folklore IS an interesting ambiguous character, so she could have been a very complex primary antagonist -- but in this book, she really wasn't. She killed with relish and had dead hands as servants. She turned innocent women into swans. She served her functional purpose (in the fairy tale sense), but with no ambiguity or real depth. Why did Vassa see ambiguity in Babs at the end?
Ultimately, a really creative retelling of Vassalisa, gorgeous writing, but not well-paced and with some baffling characterization (and/or shallow characterization) and unnecessarily convoluted plot choices.