Spinning Silver
SYNOPSIS
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders... but her father isn't a very good one.
Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife's dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem steps in.
Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers' pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed--and finds herself more than up to the task.
When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold. But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it's worth--especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.
Title: Spinning Silver
Author: Naomi Novik
Page Count: 480 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4.5 stars
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Release Date: July 10, 2018
Buy It: Chapters Indigo
MILANA'S REVIEW
To start I have to tell you all that I just adore the way Naomi Novik writes. When I was little I loved reading old slavic folklore and her writing brings back the nostalgia. I feel as though I'm floating on clouds when I dive into her worlds.
Spinning Silver first began as a short story that I found in an anthology. When I saw she was writing it into a full blown book I just knew I had to have it! I wondered how she would spin it to be longer but spin it she did (see what I did there, haha)! This is a retelling of Rumplestilskin with completely different elements. It was beautiful, it was haunting and it had a pace that kept me reading and wanting more.
I have one qualm with it though. Throughout the story you are given different points of views but there is nothing to distinguish who is speaking from one paragraph to another. There is a symbol that denotes when the voice changes but when there's 6 different voices it's hard to tell who is speaking for a few paragraphs, it just felt a little disjointed.
BUT! Do not let that deter you! It's still a 4.5 star read for me and I can't wait to re-read it.
**Thank you Penguin CA for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review, absolutely loved it and cannot wait to read more from Novik. Can she please dive into the Rusalka folktale?**