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dustydigger
Posted 2020-01-06 6:04 AM (#21654 - in reply to #21614)
Subject: Re: Pick & Mix 2020 reading challenge		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		Wow!
Finished Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver. I am always fascinated at how many authors are attracted to fairy tales and how they are inspired to produce such a wide variety of interesting work.Novik starts off and for a hundred pages she sets up her highly detailed, rooted in reality, mediaeval world,it could almost just be an historical novel. Only then does she lure us into the fantasy world,which seems utterly believable.She uses the Rumpelstiltskin tale as inspiration,but lightly,using motifs from the tale but not slavishly following the story,so we feel more like being in a dream world,somehow elusively familiar. Unusually too Novik uses a Jewish moneylending family as protagonists,not at all common in this sort of genre/ All in all it is a fine book,faithfully showing that harsh world depicted in real fairy tales,not the Disney sugarcoated versions.
Cruelty,injustice,abject poverty.,child abuse and dysfunctional families are a staple of the original tales,and Novik certainly exhibits this.. But she excels at depicting interesting characters.with sometimes complex motives,combined with an interesting plot.
Long time since a book has gripped so hard .Remarkable.
Have been enduring bad sinusitis,too uncomfortable to do much reading,so already I am behind in my reading schedule Typical!
On next to The Goblin Emperor,and Daniel O'Malley's Stiletto

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