Monday, October 8, 2018

Spinning Silver (audiobook)

genre: young adult fantasy

Miryem is the daughter of a moneylender and while her father is content living on the meager scrapings of what borrowers choose to repay, Miryem is done with dire poverty.  When her mother's sickness threatens to take her from Miryem, she makes a choice. She will collect the accounts.  MIRYEM will learn how to make money.

And make money she does.

And someone notices.

And in this phenomenally rich and textured retelling of Rumplestiltskin, Miryem and two other young women are at the crux of a battle between dark and light, good and evil, a winter that won't stop and a fire that won't be quenched.  Only their choices, their decision to find their own power, will save a kingdom on the brink of destruction from the foes that are lurking just beyond their sight.

There are so many reasons why this book is amazing.  Don't be fooled by the slow start - it takes a while for the action to start because there is so much groundwork that has to be laid in order for the story to take shape.

*All of our main protagonists are young women, from very different backgrounds, all of whom have to claw their way into the power within them.  I love how this book is very clear about how sometimes we have to do hard things BEFORE we know we are able to do them.

*The magic is both light and so heavy - sometimes it feels like whisps of magical realism: trees that can comfort you and huts with wool that can spin itself while you sleep.  But also you'll find magical creatures that can give you nightmares and an ability so powerful that it gets the notice of a king.

*The time and place - while obviously partially fantastical, is also grounded and real, a rural Eastern Europe with peasants who hate the Jews even while needing to borrow their money.  Czars that can rule with terror or benevolence, changing on a whim.  I loved the Jewish threads in this tale, woven so seamlessly into the magic.

*While I always love romance in my books - the lack of an overpowering romantic storyline here actually made it more powerful, I think.  These girls aren't doing hard things for the love of a boy.  They are doing hard things for their family, their people, their way of life.  Love might come or it might not but duty first.  That feels really empowering.

I want to note that while the audio is VERY well done, when you listen it might sometimes take you a few minutes to recognize that you've changed storytellers - the story is told (superbly) from many different points of view and while some of the voices the narrator uses are very different, some are not and it sometimes takes a few minutes of context to figure some of the transitions out.  Usually once I figured it out I would just rewind a minute and listen again, knowing who was talking again.  I'd imagine in the paper book it wouldn't be a problem to figure it out.

While this story is really only loosely based on the old story of a little man with a secret name, it's certainly one I'll be thinking about for a while.

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