It is a first person narrative, written from the perspective of several characters, but mostly Miryem, the daughter of a Jewish moneylender, who takes on her father’s work and becomes very good at it. Given some of the themes, it is probably an inch into adult, rather than YA, but the writing is not so literary that it won’t appeal to younger audiences around the 12+ bracket. This is a beautiful Russian-style fairy tale, drawing on Slavic folklore and history, but written with the clear aim of appealing to the modern reader. My grandfather said nothing, only held the purse a little while, balanced on his palm, weighing it, but I saw he was proud of me. When we went back to Vysnia the next spring, I brought my grandfather’s purse back with me full of kopeks rolled and ready to be changed into gold zlotek and put into the bank, safe from Staryk raiders behind the thick walls of the vault and the thicker city walls outside. People came to me from far off, dozens of villages around, and borrowed money to carry them through. The spring had come late again, and the summer was short, and even the vegetable gardens grew slowly. I liked Spinning Silver so much it has done a great deal to salvage my opinion of Novik’s writing, which is, I must say, rather distracting.Īll that cold year, I sowed my silver. And then I was given this as a gift, and I really, really liked it. I read Uprooted a few years ago, and I all but loathed it (find my review here). I adored Temeraire and the first few of its sequels, but then I started to flag, and never finished the series. Naomi Novik has been a hit-and-miss for me. Do you know what I don’t like? I don’t like it when you think you have an author pegged, and they surprise you.

Spinning silver