No real reason to review these two stories together to be honest. I’ve just been falling behind with my reviews, as my followers may have noticed. I enjoyed both novels, but don’t feel like they were anything super special.

I did listen to both these books on Audible, making them my first non-Ada Palmer audiobooks. I must say I am liking this format a lot more than I thought I would. I’ve heard mixed things about audiobooks, but since I spend a lot of time driving alone, being able to listen to a book in my car works for me. Frost is also going to hold a special place in my heart because I started listening to it with my partner in the car. He isn’t a reader, so although I talk to him about the books I read a lot, I’ve never been able to have a conversation with him about a book where he has followed along with the story and come to his own conclusions about it. He hasn’t finished Frost yet, but it was great listening to it together and then coming up with our own theories about it.

Let’s start talking about the actual books though. The Bear and the Nightingale is a novel-length Russian folktale. It is certainly fantasy, with talismans and magic and demons aplenty, but it is also grounded in reality. This story features a lot of information about 14^th Century Russian life and politics, and when the fantastical elements weren’t present it almost read like historical fiction.

The more realistic vibe has an impact on the fantasy parts of the story too. A lot of common fairy tale tropes are played with. For example, the Heroine’s mother died giving birth to her, and early on in the book her father remarries. Her step-mother is an ‘evil’ step-mother, but she is not entirely unsympathetic, and her relationship with the heroine deteriorates over time, rather than starts out entirely antagonistic.

This book had great worldbuilding and lovable characters, and a nice coming-of-age story, but I find myself not excited about the sequel at all. Which is okay, since this book feels complete to me. It had a satisfying ending where all loose ends were tired up. The sequel feels like a bonus, but I am just not interested in continuing in this world at the moment. So, I guess I’m going to part amicably from this series. I guess the magic system didn’t appeal to me, though I did like the descriptions of all the spirits of the house and forest. I can’t really put my finger on why I didn’t love this book. It could just be that I’m not that into fantasy.

All in all The Bear and the Nightingale is a good book, and really well written. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy and folk tales.

Now we get to Frost, and I can tell you exactly what this book did right, and what it got really wrong. First of all, the narration by Cyrina Fiallo was excellent. She used a lot of filters to get all the robot voices sounding perfect. For this alone, I would recommend the audiobook. The story itself was also interesting. It’s about a young girl called Frost who has spent her whole life in an apartment in a post-apocalyptic city. Her only companions are her pet Roams, a giant pink monster, and her robot Bunt, who has the consciousness of her dead father somewhere inside him. When Roams gets sick, Frost insists on taking him through the city, which is full of all sorts of dangers, hoping to get him to a safe place that may have medicine for him.

So we have this innocent young woman travelling through this terrible city, witnessing all these horrible things as she tries to save her beloved pet. As she meets many different robots and Humans in robot bodies, there are discussions about what makes someone a human, or how to obtain personhood. There were some elements that reminded me of games that had discussed this topic, such as Nier Automata and Soma. There are also zombies in this world, but they’re not really your standard zombies. They are called eaters, and it is made clear that they are still thinking, feeling people, they just have an uncontrollable hunger that they cannot resist. They also can’t communicate, because usually they eat their own tongues soon after becoming infected. I really liked the eaters, as they act like zombies, but their personhood poses a moral dilemma to the protagonists.

The writing style was a mixed bag for me. Kowlowsky uses very descriptive language, which paints a real vivid picture of the world. But some of this descriptive style finds its way into character dialog, which created some really long and unrealistic monologues. Characters were also a mixed bag. I liked Bunt, and I liked the main villain. I liked Frost a lot at first, but she did seem a bit Mary Sue at times. Some of the minor villains also seemed unrealistically bad. These problems probably wouldn’t have been that big a deal, but I also really didn’t like the end. Or rather, I didn’t like where the story ended.

During Frost’s journey, she crosses the Good John Lord, a tyrant who requires something from her and her father. The plot to defeat this villain and save the city got really interesting and exciting. It also came to a satisfactory conclusion an hour before the book finished. Everything that happened after that seemed long, drawn out, and rather pointless. Which is a shame, because this book has a good twist that was very well built up, but the reveal happens for no reason and doesn’t pay off. There were two other moments in the last hour of the book that were supposed to be really dramatic and touching, but they just felt pointless and contrived.

There is a sequel in the works for this book, and again, I’m not too sure I want to continue the series. I am really interested in some of the unanswered questions at the end of Frost, but I feel really let down by the ending.

Both of these books I found entertaining, but I didn’t love them. Both were good, enjoyable books, and I’m glad I listened to them.

~ Lauren