All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me.”

The bear and the nightingale is a perfect book for the autumn/winter months of the year, it is the perfect book to devour as you sit curled up near the fireplace with a hot coffee in your hand, or curled up in your bed at 3am.

The book falls under the Adult Fantasy genre and follows our main character Vasya, who lives in a village in the Northern woods of Russia where the people of the village are extremely superstitious believing in various old gods such as the Domovoi, Bannik and many others, as well as believing in this new god which is Christianity. The divide between old and new is a key theme in the book with many of the villagers as the story progresses forgetting about the old in order to accept this new religion in which the old gods are seen as demons rather than help. The move to this new religion causes a lot of problems for the small village and in turn causes Vanya to question herself as well as her beliefs and where she stands.

In terms of pacing the book is pretty slow, it's a tale that focuses heavily on character development, setting and the plot. The beauty of the book is that it is heavily inspired by Russian fairy tales, which Arden has retold and heavily impacts the plot of the story. I have personally never read a book which was first set in around the time of Ivan II as well as his son Dimitry, but also incorporated Russian stories into its narrative. I have gotten used to hearing fairytales heavily influenced by the western world such as the Grimm fairy tales so it was a breath of fresh air to have a novel based on tales I was not so familiar with.

The characters in this book for me were amazing, it was beautiful to see this family dynamic where certain characters got on extremely well with one another and others were not so close, Arden did a great depiction of what it feels like to live with siblings in a large family. She did a great job in creating a character which is strong willed, strong headed as well as heavily opinionated and not afraid to let others know what she believes. Vanya is stubborn but at the same time she is extremely loving even when others do not always reciprocate the same back to her.

All in all the book was fantastic, it has a beautiful setting that you are immediately transported to, it had characters which you cried and smiled with and it had a plot that at times was excruciatingly slow but at the same time kept you guessing and on your toes about what may happen next.