The Bear and the Nightingale is a lovely blend of fantasy and fairy tale, with a strong female lead facing not just the challenges of society, but those of nature and myth, too. As with other books built on Slavic legend, there was a bit of familiarity to those of Ukraine, with a slight difference, like the tartness of a crab apple to a Pippin plucked fully ripe from the tree. I was singularly surprised , but not disappointed, when the elements I expected or anticipated didn't play out. Arden did a good job at capturing the ugliness of crowd mentality in the townspeople, depicting personalities of the jealous and disappointed, relating the interplay of that which we delegate to fantasy with real life, and showing different sorts and strength of love. Overall, I enjoyed this book and will look for more by this author.
Thanks to LibraryThing and the publisher for sending this copy my way.
Tags: 2016-read, alternate-history, creatures, early-review-librarything, first-novel-or-book, fantasy, i-liked-it, magical-realism, will-look-for-more-by-this-author, advanced-reader-copy
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