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The Odyssey
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The Girl in the Tower
Katherine Arden
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This book. THIS BOOK!
This book was not at all what I thought it would be going into it — in the best way — it is full of so much emotion, beautiful prose, Russian folklore, and heart.
It had a refreshing take on the “evil stepmother” trope in my opinion, where the stepmother isn’t evil simply because she’s vain or prioritizes her own children, but because she is afraid.
Fear is such a huge theme throughout this novel, how it changes people and drives them. How it interacts with religion and community. And the religious aspects of this book are just !! Wow! This book is largely a critique of Christianity and how the spread of it changed entire communities, traditions, and stories. There are such incredible moments of religion using fear to instill faith, mouthpieces of religion using it for their own personal gain, and the notion of god which can corrupt as much as it claims to save.
Vasya is an incredible heroine. She is true to herself but she does feel the pressure of her refusal to conform. She rages against her lot as a woman and she never gives up the desire to try and see if life can somehow be different for her.
The prose itself is gorgeous, reading like a fairytale — something straight out of the bloody chamber or a brothers Grimm collection — and Arden is skillful in her setup of events.
I LOVED this book. It was much more substantial than I could have ever imagined and I am all the more grateful to have read it.