5 Stars
You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
On the face of it, this seems to be a very simple fairy tale story albeit with astonishingly gorgeous prose. Valante's wordsmithing is art; I think I ended up with over 50 bookmarks. Also, the delicate story within a story within a story is so precise that it could be easy to ignore or miss without the relevant prerequisite knowledge about the history of Russia.
This story does not wander, it is cyclical. It embraces a never-ending mindset rather than a linear one. This is an older conceptual philosophy that predates Christian theology. Marya and Koschei come full circle like a wheel spinning.
Remember, dream, mourn. There is no beginning without an ending, but with each ending comes a beginning. This is elegant. The layers of history and symbolism and life are delicately constructed, all nestled inside of each other. This is a book where writing a review is difficult, nigh impossible because there are too many nuances to address without pages, every single thing that appears does so for a reason and will appear again.
I loved Koschei from the beginning:
If she had looked out the window, she might have seen a great, hoary old black owl alight on the branch of the oak tree. She might have seen the owl lean perilously forward on his green-black branch and, without taking his gaze from her window, fall hard—thump, bash!—onto the streetside. She would have seen the bird bounce up, and when he righted himself, become a handsome young man in a handsome black coat, his dark hair curly and thick, flecked with silver, his mouth half-smiling, as if anticipating a terribly sweet thing.
I will read this again, not because I will forget it, but because it is so beautiful, bleak, and sharp that I must.
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