NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of the year’s strongest fantasy novels” (NPR), an imaginative retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale from the bestselling author of Uprooted.NEBULA AND HUGO AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York … LIBRARY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Time • Tordotcom • Popsugar • Vox • Vulture • Paste • Bustle • Library Journal
With the Nebula Award–winning Uprooted, Naomi Novik opened a brilliant new chapter in an already acclaimed career, delving into the magic of fairy tales to craft a love story that was both timeless and utterly of the now. Spinning Silver draws readers deeper into this glittering realm of fantasy, where the boundary between wonder and terror is thinner than a breath, and safety can be stolen as quickly as a kiss.
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. She will face an impossible challenge and, along with two unlikely allies, uncover a secret that threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike.
Praise for Spinning Silver
“A perfect tale . . . A big and meaty novel, rich in both ideas and people, with the vastness of Tolkien and the empathy and joy in daily life of Le Guin.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Gorgeous, complex, and magical . . . This is the kind of book that one might wish to inhabit forever.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Cool and clever and . . . dire and wonderful.”—Laini Taylor, author of Strange the Dreamer
“The Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale has never been as captivating. . . . Spinning Silver further cements [Novik’s] place as one of the genre greats.”—Paste
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Not bad for YA. I enjoyed the story and the progression of each character.
A wonderful fairy tale
Great fantasy book. Also it’s one book. Nine of this waiting for the sequel. For fans of Rothfuss who recommends it,
Like Naomi Novik’s book, Uprooted, this is a wonderfully fresh look at fairy tale stories. Spinning Silver intertwines and weaves three different threads until they all coalesce into a page turning story. I found the middle a bit long, but the ending more than made up for a bit of slow pacing. If you are looking for something new and different, this award winning story just might be your reading jam.
Naomi Novik is a fantastic writer. All of her books are enthralling. Spinning Silver is simply wonderful.
Having read and enjoyed UPROOTED by Novik, I thought I’d try another of her standalone novels, and I wasn’t disappointed. She once again delivers an unusual high fantasy tale filled with fully developed and likeable characters, all the more believable for their flaws.
My only issue was Novik’s decision to adopt a first-person point-of-view throughout for every POV character. Now I love multiple POV books, so that’s not my issue. But every scene, for every POV character was in first-person (“I did this…”). The initial confusion / uncertainty in every scene to figure out whose POV we were now in kept kicking me out of the story. I couldn’t see any reason for adopting this approach, so it seemed like an affectation that detracted from the reading experience rather than an approach that strengthened the tale.
Still, with the above caveat, I’d recommend this one highly.
beautiful language
Fascinating. Really enjoyed this.
I went in expecting something just like Uprooted (which I also enjoyed), but I got so much more with this one. The multiple POV characters were wonderful, and I loved seeing their stories weave together and solve the problems caused by incompetent men. Also, it reminded me a little of The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.
I couldn’t put this book down! It’s everything I want in a weekend read – smart, oroginal, with characters you care about and NO PLOT HOLES!
This book represents everything I love in a great fantasy. I don’t read fantasy as much as I want to, because I had my fair share of fantasy books. But Naomi Novik is one of my favorite unicorn authors, so I knew this one wouldn’t be a bad choice. And it was the perfect book to start the year!
I’m not lying when I say — this book is pure magic. And not only because the story is full of witchcraft. No, because it put a spell on me and refused to let go of me the whole time.
Novik is one of the biggest storytellers. The way she connects her characters, the magic she has in her words… Be warned, people — her talent shows on a very high level in this book!
You may ask her what kind of fairytale or fantasy novel is it to make my world spin… Well, items one of the greatest I’ve ever read! And I think no matter how old are you, you need this kind of magic into your life. It’s something you really have to experience.
Take a journey with these amazing characters and enjoy the greatest adventure ever!
Interesting and imaginative tale. I really liked Miryem and Wanda as characters. Overall an enjoyable read but had some issues with the story. I was a bit confused when the story added more narrators half way through; sometimes it wasn’t immediately obvious who the speaker was. That could have been solved by having the narrator’s name at the top of each section. I also didn’t feel like the Staryk people and world were very well explained; the Staryk King also seemed pretty flat and one-dimensional to me. Miryem’s ending also made me roll my eyes (won’t spoil it). Worth reading, though.
Spinning Silver is a captivating, magical story, loosely based on the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin. There are three strong, resourceful and determined women, Miryem, Wanda, and Irina, each striving to escape a fate thrust upon them and their people. There’s also a Staryk Winter King pitted against a Fire Demon. There are multiple subplots and several twists which present conflicting dangers. Multiple points of view allow the narrative to flow so that you are totally engrossed.
Naomi Novik’s writing is so descriptive and fluid that she makes you impatient to find out how things will ultimately be resolved. I don’t want to give specific details because part of the pleasure in reading this novel is to let the protagonists and antagonists tell their versions of events. Spinning Silver is totally enthralling, drawing you in from the first chapter to the last. This is one of the best books that I’ve read in 2018. I highly recommend it.
It’s such an interesting story, a different take on fantasy. I enjoyed it.
This author really has a gift for retelling and reimagining fairytales. Of course, everything is different in her stories. The women are different. The politics are different. The cultural view is different. And thus the plots can evolve in strange directions. The romance of true love seems to be the same, however, which I find both a little disappointing and also deeply satisying.
Quite likely the best book I have read this year, I strongly reccommend Spinning Silver! I hesitated reading it because I kept reading reviews that said it was a fresh take on the Rumpelstiltskin story…ignore those! To call it that minimizes the creativity, wonder, and strong inspirational characters residing in this beautifully written fantasy. Beautifully written prose to express fully developed characters and the intersection of their lives and goals. A new favorite…can’t wait for the next Naomi Novik story!
It’s hard to do better than Naomi Novik when you want a good historical fantasy.
Spinning Silver, her latest offering, is a riff on Rumpelstiltskin set in medieval Russia. Miryem, the daughter of a Jewish moneylender, takes up her father’s trade and finds she’s shrewd enough to turn pennies into silver and silver into gold. Her success attracts the attention of the Staryk King, the manifestation of Russian winter. He wants her to make gold for him, and eventually forces her into being his bride. From there, the story’s stakes rise significantly, as Miryem must find a way to escape the Staryk and prevent his deadly chill from covering the land while a second supernatural force seeks to consume it.
Novik goes lighter on the history here than she did in her Napoleonic-era Temeraire series, but Spinning Silver is still threaded with authentic details. The prejudice Miryem and her family experience feels particularly real—and relevant. I also liked that Miryem and the other two female leads aren’t beauties (a common trope in fantasy). Instead, they’re resourceful and brave, facing down men and demons alike. Two of the three villains become multi-faceted as well, and the quick-paced plot believably pulls the characters into alliances and then sets them at odds.
I’m less high on the rotating first-person point of view. Novik does a good job of letting you know which character is narrating at the beginning of each scene, and she varies the voices enough to make them distinctive, but this technique always feels a bit like an oral history to me. I think third-person would have worked just as well, if not better. I also saw some family resemblances to Uprooted, Novik’s other standalone fantasy—the environment as an adversary, bad guys who turn out to be not so bad and help the protagonist defeat the real villain, etc.
But I loved Spinning Silver anyway. If you like historical fantasy, you probably will too. Novik is one of the best in the business.
(For more reviews like this one, see http://www.nickwisseman.com)
When we think about retellings of fairy tales, we typically think that the rewoven story will have a similar spin to the original. That was not the case with Spinning Silver. In fact, the very first paragraph of Novik’s novel explains “the real story” – which “isn’t half as pretty as the one you’ve heard”.
With the lines between bad and good characters being drawn with a line too fuzzy to distinguish where it actually is, you might find yourself rooting for the ‘bad’ guys – or the ‘good’ guys might not be so good after all. Personally, I was rooting for the Staryk (which I cannot for the life of me pronounce), but if you fall for the realistic crafting of the moneylender’s daughter or the heart wrenching tale of Wanda, a peasant, then I wouldn’t blame you one bit. They were all so carefully depicted, that even the worst of all of the characters can find a soft place in your heart.
If Novik’s other works are even half as good as Spinning Silver was, then they are treasures to be kept and reread over and over again. Not only was Spinning Silver well written, but it gave closure at the end instead of leaving the reader hanging, waiting for another installment. That isn’t to say there couldn’t be, but that I, for one, was content with the ending.
Quite truthfully, I prefer Novik’s version to the original tale and found I was recommending it to others before even finishing it. I would recommend this novel to anyone who loves fairy tales, and anyone who loves to be drawn into a story so deeply that they cannot tell where one world begins and the other ends.
Novik will continue to have a place on my bookshelf and in my recommendations.
Absolutely spellbinding, dark, and twisted. I loved it.
I loved this book — I read it in one long session. I couldn’t imagine half way through how it would end.