Here Naomi Novik has gathered countless old tales and turned them into something all kinds of new ... But she also borrows our everyday truths: the way a family can disintegrate into violence, the way a ghetto can be disappeared, how the everyday persecution of Jews can erupt into mass violence, the magic of young children becoming people ... In richness of ideas, and in glory of sentences, both these books are spectacular. Where Uprooted was clean and thrilling, Spinning Silver is like falling asleep in the passenger seat of a car and waking with a jolt of fear ... No one ever takes a lesson! Here our heroines do — and we finally get a perfect tale about the songs of ice and fire.
Spinning Silver is billed as a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, and you can see the bones of that story poking through ... What is truly marvelous thing is that, rather than writing against these narrative expectations, Novik embraces and complicates them, leaving the well-worn framework glittering with new meaning and unexpected implications ... This is an affirming, uplifting, multilayered, and wholly original novel, filled with indomitable women ... a story I will hold closely in my heart for a long time.
Like Uprooted, the story sometimes overspills the bounds of its plot, and anyone who disliked the romance in that is unlikely to enjoy the romances in this. But like Uprooted, the main narrative engine is deep, loving friendships and alliances between women ... I didn't want it to end, and I could write gushing praise of it for much longer than I have here — about fairy tale fathers and fairy tale mothers, about how Miryem's Jewishness is the book's warm, glowing heart, about how interlaced it is with the plot's intrusive fairy magic, and about how fascinating is the book's twining of religion, capital, and enchantment. But mostly I'm in awe of how Novik spins moldy, hateful straw into warm and glimmering gold.
While the story of Rumplestilskin is indeed used as a basic premise, Novik unweaves the original story, using threads of it to inspire different characters ... Novik employs multiple narrative voices in Spinning Silver, a number of perspectives making up this deftly woven and highly immersive fairy tale, with all threads connecting eventually in a satisfying way.
Part of the fascination in reading the novel comes from the skillful manner in which Novik gradually modulates and expands the scope of her tale from its modest beginnings (essentially that original story) into a full-blown epic, without losing sight of the economic and social realities that ground it in human terms ... For all the ice and fireworks that should make Spinning Silver a delight for readers of high fantasy, such insights into the plight of the outsider are what lend the novel both its richness of texture and its deeply felt conscience.
These tales – the artful gleanings of survival-conscious Jews and other minorities – have remained relevant to generations removed from the shtetl. In the hands of fantasy author Naomi Novik, they acquire another dimension still ... The roots of this work are apparent in its language, its metaphors speaking of an older, primarily rural world ... Not only did Novik know her military history (she owns to being a fan of Patrick O’Brian), she created fully realized and distinctive dragon characters and kept scrupulously to her own imagined rules ... the book was an endearing, funny, sexy, and smart revelation. It reads like a fairy tale for adults, the kind of book that constantly surprises, even as it leaves you with the feeling that you’ve known this story all your life.
...reads like a fairy tale you already know in your bones. But this fairy tale lets its heroine be both monster and princess ... Novik’s world-building is rich and detailed, with a magical system that makes emotional sense ... Novik’s voice is simple and evocative, but it can occasionally feel cluttered ... a bright new installment from an author who’s poised to become one of the definitive YA voices of her era.
As befits a story with a climactic battle between an ice king and a demon tsar, Novik grounds her story in folklore and fairy tales, quicksilver allusions to Grimm and Andersen. But this fairy land is all too human, riven by misogyny and bigotry, poverty and oppression. Which is not to say Novik hectors — she has constructed a social whole whose contradictions feel lived in ... I shouldn’t neglect to praise the quiet flourishes of Novik’s prose.
Spinning Silver is a lush, richly imagined, gloriously magical fantasy novel ... it is everything, EVERYTHING, that a fairy tale for adults should be ... The characters in this novel are amazingly, vibrantly drawn. I loved the way the author is able to capture the reality of an era in which women could be expected to be treated as little more than chattel, and yet create three clever, talented young ladies ... The writing is beautiful, lyrical, incandescent. It reads like a fairy story and but one with real depth, carefully crafted and heartrendingly poignant and lovely ... a brilliant, creative idea perfectly executed.
Multiple voices—first one, then two, and, eventually, six—of unique characters are smoothly melded together ... These entwined stories and all they touch are ultimately about family and the power of love. Novik’s fans, and readers who enjoy well-spun fairy-tale re-creations, will be thoroughly enchanted.
...this may well be the first book of its kind: there is staggeringly little Jewish fantasy, compared to the number of Jewish people who work and write in the field. And doing this with a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin is a stroke of genius, because that story has often been associated with the stereotypical view of Jews in medieval Europe, as child-stealers. Rumpelstiltskin has been used to reinforce the blood libel. This book is an act of reclamation on a very deep level. It is also marvelous to read ... This is not a perfect novel, of course. The pacing is peculiar in the latter third, and there are perhaps two or three more plot complications than are precisely necessary. The dramatic energy peaks three separate times, and while the first two come off well enough, by the time the third is reached the sheer amount of drama is a little tiring. But, in the end, the book holds together.
This gorgeous, complex, and magical novel, grounded in Germanic, Russian, and Jewish folklore but richly overlaid with a cohesive, creative story of its own, rises well above a mere modern re- imagining of classic tales ... Her work inspires deep musings about love, wealth, and commitment, and embodies the best of the timeless fairy-tale aesthetic. Readers will be impressed by the way Novik ties the myriad threads of her story together ... This is the kind of book that one might wish to inhabit forever.
In spare prose of great clarity Novik weaves in and out of multiple first-person narratives in sometimes-illuminating, sometimes-disconcerting or confusing ways ... A medieval fable of obscure moral import blossoms into a thoughtful, emotionally complex, absorbing drama that stands confidently on its own merits.
