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Description

Marisha’s life is not going as she expected. With the sleeping plague only a few months away, she’s as desperate for money as she is to escape her aunt’s torturous marriage prospects. Leaving all that she’s known behind, Marisha accepts a job working with the notorious koldunya, Baba Zima in her house that glides on chicken feet through the snow.

But Baba Zima is renowned for being both clever and cruel. And most difficult of all is her current apprentice, Olena, who wants nothing to do with Marisha. Despite her fears and Olena’s cold demeanour, Marisha finds herself drawn into the magical world of koldunry and delves further into Olena’s research – a cure for the sleeping plague.

Accompanying Olena on an increasingly dangerous, seemingly impossible search for a cure, she finds hidden connections between the sleeping plague, her own family’s history, and her bizarre, recurring dreams: dreams of a masked ball where the deep sleepers are trapped endlessly dancing – and a monstrous beaked man haunts her every step . . .

My Review

I found an ARC of this book at FantasyCon, one of the Hodderscape team must have left it lying around after a book launch event. It has a matching bookmark. Essentially I have paperback version of the hardback now available. The book was published 16th of this month. The paperback from HarperVoyager will be published in June. It has a different cover, so I might get it. This book is the February BFS Book Club book, and since I had it and felt like reading something different yesterday evening, I started reading it.

When I went to bed I was over 220 pages in and only stopped reading because my eyes were stinging with tiredness. I planned to go swimming this afternoon, but decided to stay home and finish the story instead. I’m going swimming tomorrow instead.

Marisha is cursed. Her mother, then her father, succumb to the sleeping plague, ten years apart. Her brother loses their fortune and she is, after finishing school, thrown on the mercies of her wealthy maternal aunts. Who pity and hate her, fearing she’ll bring the curse to them next time the sleeping plague strikes. Determined to get away from her aunts and the prospect of marriage to a man twice her age with evil eyes, she applies to be a koldunya’s assistant.

She’s too old.

She doesn’t believe in magic or curses.

She doesn’t have koldunya quality.

Her parents are victims of the sleeping plague and her brother has disappeared.

She is stubborn, logical, and hardworking. She knows how to scrub pans, read Old Slavonic, and the house didn’t squash her immediately.

Baba Zima takes her on for a year.

But she’s assistant to Olena, Baba Zima’s apprentice, who is stubborn, spiky, doesn’t let people in, and really doesn’t want an assistant.

The household is completed by two other young assistance, Dunya and Anka-ny, and they are later joined by Baba Zima’s son Valdim

For three months the household travels across the land, dispensing advice, cures, and spirit work to supplicants. Marisha develops a complicated relationship with Olena, especially after they kidnap a victim of the sleeping plague from a sanitorium and Marisha starts having terrifying dreams of a masked ball in the other world. When not hiding their kidnappee in a linen closet, Marisha helps Olena by reading a mountain of books and finding hints about the plague, while picking up the skills of a koldunya, although she doesn’t want to be one.

Olena has complicated feelings about Valdim, Marisha, and Baba Zima, while she struggles with finding a cure for the plague. Her plans seem to work then go awry, Baba Zima tests her loyalty frequently, and abuses her trust as often.

Baba Zima is suspicious; an old rival, Anatoli, is rumoured to have found a way to cure the plague, and has been making overtures to Olena. She doesn’t trust Olena not to betray her, so she distracts her by asking for help with the demonstration they will perform for other koldunya.

As winter comes to an end, the house on chicken legs takes the household to a clearing in the forest, to a gathering of koldunya, the krug. Here, events become tangled further, as Olena is tempted by her mentor’s rival, and Marisha is ‘helped’ by a kolduni who seems familiar, Pan Volya.

The actions of Marisha’s parents, Baba Zima, Anatoli, and their presumed dead matron, Baba Fima, and Pan Volya, before Marisha was born, bears fruit in the present, as Marisha, Dima (her brother), Olena, and Voldam, face the consequences and fight to save the entire world from the sleeping plague.

An imaginative fantasy of redemption, drawing heavily from Slavic mythology and folklore. Witches and wizards (to use English equivalents) flying around in giant mortars, or living in houses that walk about of chicken legs; the waters of life and death, that can heal the body and the spirit if applied appropriately, but which are hidden; deep dark forests, and poor villages, where disabled children are considered cursed, a punishment for the sins of their parents.

The name of the country, Chernozemlya, seems to be a reference to black earth. The black soil of Slavic regions of Europe are incredibly fertile and produce vast amounts of grains. It’s one of the reasons the Russian Empire, then the USSR, and the current Russian Republic, fought, killed, murdered, starved and displaced so many people. Can’t claim the soil if your own people aren’t living there. No really, it partially explains the current Russian war in Ukraine. Apart from control of the Black Sea, and Putin’s delusions of Tzarship.

The story turns on the relationships of the main characters, as they learn to work together and develop friendships or at least respect for each other. I didn’t like Baba Zima very much, she’s intentionally cruel, but as I read the last chapters, which showed her relationship with her own matron, Baba Fima, it’s clear she’s acting from fear, guilt, and a bad example of how a matron koldunya should treat her apprentices and assistants.

Olena’s history of being abused by her family and then manipulated by Zima make her reluctant to trust anyone, even the boy she grew up with, Valdim, and certainly not her assistant Marisha. She finds Marisha useful when she can be bothered to ask for her assistance, and Valdim confusing. Zima plays the three off against each other, so that until the Baba leaves unexpectedly, that make little progress. Every two steps forward in relationship building is met with a little trick by Zima, that forces them each back one step. Her removal gives them space to realise what’s been happening, and they still decide to rescue her. I found her stubbornness frustrating but understandable. She’s visibly disabled in a world that hates disability, she’s been badly treated by the people who are supposed to love her, and she feels guilt at accidentally hurting her brother. Her defence mechanism to hide from the pain is to view everything through a lens of attack, to build a wall around herself and drive people away.

Marisha seems a bit of a dolt at times; she’s blinded by her prejudices against the ‘irrational’, afraid that she’ll be the next victim of the sleeping plague, and she won’t ask for help when nightmares stop her sleeping! It’s obvious that she’s dream walking, at least it is to the reader, once we discover who is helping her. Between Marisha and Olena they have all the clues to the cure that they need, but they don’t talk to each other! I wanted to bash their heads together.

It felt like a realistic depiction of two very different and traumatised people trying to work through their differences and find new perspectives on events. Some real people never get to a point where their trauma is manageable and doesn’t colour everything in negativity, so it’s almost refreshing when fictional people do.

I enjoyed the depiction of Valdim’s sensory sensitivities and synaesthesia, and the way Olena’s foreshortened arm was still a functioning arm. Valdim’s ‘invisible’ disability makes him an over sensitive weirdo, who might see people’s souls, while Olena’s highly visible arm and birthmark are a punishment for her mother’s transgressions and a sign she is cursed. It suggests the author is aware of and sensitive to different forms of disability and the way disabled people and their families/friends make adjustments, even in cultures and societies that don’t recognise some disabilities or that treat disabled people badly.

Yay for sensitive disability representation!

I enjoyed the use of Slavic mythology and folklore in the story, it gave it a richness and depth that was immersive. There’s a rich and deep vein of story to draw on, that few English-language fantasy writers have tapped, and there are probably a lot of good fantasy novels not yet published in English that we’re missing out on.

This book left me feeling melancholy but satisfied. There’s a sense that everything has changed, and the characters are still catching up with themselves and their hopes for the future.

I do want to know what happens next for the trio. Do Olena and Valdim make a go of things? Does Kiril finally remember who Marisha is? What happened when Marisha visits her parents and brother? Do Dunya and Anka-by return to the house of chicken’s legs and continue with their training? Will Baba Zima catch up with Baba Fima? What will Anatoli and Pan Volya do next? Has the bird-faced man been defeated? How does Chernozemlya react to the sudden awakening of all the Sleeping Plague victims?

So many questions! I a bit invested in this world, aren’t I? I wonder if there will be a sequel?

I hope so, because Wiesebron’s writing is evocative, her characters grab attention, and the story was engrossing.