This book is so good. It combines a bunch of genres that I love- medieval historical fiction, Russian folk tales, fantasy, coming of age... it takes place in the mid 1300s, a time in which Russian was not yet unified and various princes paid tributes to the Khan (the empire of Genghis Khan's descendants). Pyotr Vladimirovich already has three sons and a daughter when his wife Marina gets pregnant once again. She knows in her bones that this child will be a daughter and that she herself will die in childbirth. But this daughter, Vasilisa, will have the strength and the sight that passes down their bloodline. So Vasilisa is raised by a loving nurse who tells her many old tales- about Ivan and the Grey Wolf, about the Firebird, and about Karachun the winter-king. Vasilisa believes all of these stories to be true- why not, when she can see and speak with the domovoi spirit who guards the hearth, the dvorovi who guards the yard, the bannik in the bathhouse and the vazila in the stables? She has a wild and magical childhood in and out of the great forest. Then her father re-marries to a princess from Moscow, and a handsome and charismatic priest comes to stay in their village. Soon the priest and the step-mother and telling the villagers to forget the old ways, to stop leaving offering of bread and milk at the hearth, to believe only in god. As the house-spirits weaken an old and dark enemy begins to stir in the woods. Vasilisa has many gifts, but she may not have time to grow into them before her home and her family and swallowed up by the dark.