Borrowed HEAVILY from Naomi Novik

Clearly Ms. West read Novik's Spinning Silver. I don't mind reading something inspired by another work and was willing to go along with it until the fifth time I rolled my eyes after seeing full lines of dialogue lifted from the previous novel. Honestly, save your time and read the original. It has much richer world building, a more complex plot, and character decisions that aren't made unbelievable by Ms. West's attempt to truncate a much larger work into a third as many pages. ( )

Полнейший бардак.

Writing a book about a country you don’t know? ASK. A. NATIVE.
Here is "Ask An Expert" link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_folder/249694?group_id=20149 . There is a "Regional Experts" thread. Please, use it.

I have no idea which century we are in, and it’s ok, plenty of books start out a little vague, especially fantasies. But being a Russian native I am so confused, my head is spinning. 17th, 18th, (literally the last year of) 19th, 20th, 21st???? Wait, wait, 22nd? Ugh! So many historical pointers - golden kopeks; St. Petersburg; the tsar; a boy from a dirt poor Sibirian village wearing frigging shoes with laces; metric & Imperial systems (wt-actual-f?) - that's just in the first 10% and they all point at the wrong time periods. And then, closer to the end, the author literally blindsided me with the Nutcracker “that was popular a few years back”.

But all of this is moot point, because there were never ever any elves of any kind or sort in the Russian mythology, including gay elves. Not to mention that in remote locations/villages Russians and Russian church as a rule do not tolerate anything but straight in the strictest way possible, yet Pavel acts like marrying a man is a common day occurrence. Pavel doesn’t even bat an eye, telling the Elven King that marriage comes first, sex second.

Come to think of it, how old is Pavel? 60% in the guy says something about "when I was 19..." That's it. He could be 55 for all I know.

Besides butchered Russian time line, culture and customs for the sake of the exotic location, I found the characters flat, the plot simplistic and the editing mediocre.

1 star is the best I can do here.

This book was read for a challenge. ( )