Spinning Silver Review

Spinning Silver

By. Naomi Novik

☕☕☕

 "A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp."

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Synopsis

    We follow the story of three strong minded women, one who values her family and freedom over all else, one who values the lives of her brothers over her own, and one who values her kingdom over her own happiness. Though they all live very different lives, their stories find their way to each other with a common goal, to stop the winter that has rampaged over the land of Lithvas for the last 7 years, slowly killing all life in the kingdom. 

    Miryem is the daughter of a Jewish moneylender, not a very good one at that. When her mother is laying on her death bed and they are unable to buy the medicine she needs, Miyram takes it upon herself to collect the money her father lent to the people of their village gaining a reputation for turning silver into gold. In doing so she attracts the attention of the Staryk King. He presents Miryem with a challenge, she must turn 3 quantities of silver to gold or else he will kill her and her loved ones, but should she succeed, he would take her back to his kingdom as his bride and she will turn all the silver he gives her to gold.  

    As Miryem claims what is owed, she hires a woman, Wanda, to aid her household as payment of her father's debt, in doing so she saves Wanda from being her fathers source of income to pay for his own indulgences, and she and her two brothers escape his ruthless abuse.

       We also follow the story of an unfortunate looking woman, Irina, who's fathers buys the silver jewels Miryem creates in exchange for gold, in doing so the attention of the Tsar is captured and they are wed, but the Tsar has a burden of his own and that burden threatens the future of the kingdom. Irina takes upon the mission of fighting this burden to save her people and to free herself from her unwanted marriage. 

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My Review

    I loved this story but I hated this book, if that makes any sense at all. Spinning Silver is an interesting, loose, take on the old folks tale, Rumpelstiltskin. Where this book lost me was the sporadic change of point of view, and for the number of different changes, I really wish she had labeled them, or at least stuck with just the 3 main characters. I believe we followed the POV of 6 different people which got super confusing and it honestly made me struggle to process the story. I spent too much time trying to figure out who I was reading rather than what. 

    I've also come to the conclusion that Naomi's writing style is just not for me. I found this book to be really hypnotic, in a bad way. Something about the massive amounts of run on sentences, super long paragraphs that would take up about 3/4ths of the page, the lack of actual talking or action or reaction from the characters just put me to sleep. It was almost boring except every once in a while something interesting would happen that would wake me up again and suck me in, only for it to get smothered by excessive description. 

    I really wish I loved this book because the story itself is absolutely stunning. The ending, unfortunately was the best part of the book for me. I practically jumped out of my seat screaming at the last few pages...but unfortunately that was the most enthusiasm the book got from me.

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My Opinion

    So overall, this is an amazing story, once you get to it. I'll probably try to read this book again later, but I don't think I will buy any other works of Naomi's just because I am not a fan of her writing style, but that's not to say this is a bad book. I'm sure people who are big into this type of writing would rate this book better then me and I respect that. I do recommend this book to people who are big into descriptive writing, I don't recommend it to people who are big into action packed fantasy books.