The Girl in the Tower: A Novel by Katherine ArdenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
[Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley for review purposes.]
Much like The Bear and the Nightingale, this book was masterfully written, full of atmosphere, and absolutely enchanting. Once the story gets on its feet, it moves along at such a rapid pace I hardly realized how quickly I was blazing right through it.
Vasya has left her home after the deaths of her father and stepmother, and gone off into the wilderness in the dead of winter. Morozko is always nearby, although not necessarily to help her (even though he does provide help in several ways throughout the story). Sometimes he felt almost too present, there at her greatest need, although I imagine he would be anyway. Vasya is off on an adventure, and unexpectedly, her path crosses with her brother Sasha's, who had left in the first book to become a monk. He is now an advisor to the Grand Prince Dmitrii, a warrior monk, and is forced to lie to everyone about his sister Vasya, who has been pretending to be a man.
While I was immediately drawn back into the world of Rus', I admit I did not get fully absorbed into the book until part two, where we really get into the meat of how Vasya came to be in the same place as Sasha at the same time. She has rescued three girls, who had been stolen by raiders, and brought them to sanctuary. Sasha and Dmitrii have been out hunting these raiders, and Vasya, riding in as a man, is the only one who knows where they were hiding. Fooling just about everyone as to her gender, she manages to get into the prince's good graces, and leads the party where they want to go. I won't spoil from here, but it is pretty much non-stop action, plot and fantastic storytelling from here on out.
There are new characters, who must have a careful eye kept on them lest they surprise you (admittedly I wasn't sure about one character, but I was not completely taken aback when my initial instinct was proved right). And there is also the return of my most despised character from the last book, Konstantin. That damnable priest is up to no good, and while I wasn't surprised by his arc, I was admittedly still feeling those same feelings of disgust I got the last time around.
If you loved book 1, you will love book 2. I am now going to eagerly camp myself out on this author's page and wait for book 3...
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