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A review by little_sparrow3
Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter
5.0
Yule WitchaThon 2018: Book I received as a gift
What an amazingly bizarre and beautiful book! I put off reading this for over two years because I thought that this would be so weird that it would take me out of the book. I was so wrong and I'm kicking myself for waiting so long! Vassa in the Night is a modern retelling of the Russian fairytale Vasilisa the Beautiful, a story about a beautiful girl who is forced to deal with a witch by her cruel stepmother and stepsisters after her mother dies and her father leaves. I read a synopsis of the original fairy tale before going into this and it helped a lot because the plot would've come across as batsh*t nuts otherwise. Porter sets her story in a fantastical version of Brooklyn that has been experiencing prolonged and miserable nights. Vassa, our sarcastic and quirky heroine, is forced by her stepsister to buy lightbulbs from BY's, a deadly version of Walmart owned by Babs, a weird old lady who likes to behead pickpockets and thieves and displays their dismembered heads on spike outside her store. On paper, it sounds nuts, and it is, but Vassa's commentary and the ethereal quality of writing just makes it work (read the first chapter about Night and you'll get what I mean). On top of the fantastic writing, the story is also unapologetically dark and sinister. I was frequently shocked by some of things that happened in the book and how bloody the story became.
When it comes down to it, Porter was able to masterfully recreate the darkness and the fantastical whimsy of the original fairy tale. It just made my reading experience more fulfilling and satisfying and I wish all fairy tale retellings could match the energy and craftsmanship of this book. I'm definitely going to look at more of Porter's books.
What an amazingly bizarre and beautiful book! I put off reading this for over two years because I thought that this would be so weird that it would take me out of the book. I was so wrong and I'm kicking myself for waiting so long! Vassa in the Night is a modern retelling of the Russian fairytale Vasilisa the Beautiful, a story about a beautiful girl who is forced to deal with a witch by her cruel stepmother and stepsisters after her mother dies and her father leaves. I read a synopsis of the original fairy tale before going into this and it helped a lot because the plot would've come across as batsh*t nuts otherwise. Porter sets her story in a fantastical version of Brooklyn that has been experiencing prolonged and miserable nights. Vassa, our sarcastic and quirky heroine, is forced by her stepsister to buy lightbulbs from BY's, a deadly version of Walmart owned by Babs, a weird old lady who likes to behead pickpockets and thieves and displays their dismembered heads on spike outside her store. On paper, it sounds nuts, and it is, but Vassa's commentary and the ethereal quality of writing just makes it work (read the first chapter about Night and you'll get what I mean). On top of the fantastic writing, the story is also unapologetically dark and sinister. I was frequently shocked by some of things that happened in the book and how bloody the story became.
When it comes down to it, Porter was able to masterfully recreate the darkness and the fantastical whimsy of the original fairy tale. It just made my reading experience more fulfilling and satisfying and I wish all fairy tale retellings could match the energy and craftsmanship of this book. I'm definitely going to look at more of Porter's books.