The Bear and the Nightingale
At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil. After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows. And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent. As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dang
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What you might want to know about The Bear and the Nightingale
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
First in the Winternight Trilogy. In a frigid medieval village at the edge of the Russian wilderness, Vasilisa Petrovna can see and feed the household spirits her family has always offered milk to. A new stepmother forbids it.
Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy has three books: The Bear and the Nightingale, The Girl in the Tower, and The Winter of the Witch. The trilogy is complete.
Yes. Katherine Arden draws extensively on Russian folklore and 14th-century history. The protagonist Vasilisa is named after the heroine of multiple Russian fairy tales, and the household spirits in the novel are drawn from documented folk tradition.
The Bear and the Nightingale was written by Katherine Arden, published in 2017 by Del Rey.
The Bear and the Nightingale is 368 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Bear and the Nightingale takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Bear and the Nightingale is a standalone novel by Katherine Arden, not part of a series.
The Bear and the Nightingale is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
