Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a fantastic novel! Everything magical is as real as any physics. When you first encounter Staryk magic, it seems arbitrary. But that’s because it’s foreign. It actually follows concrete rules, which not even the king of the Staryk can break.

It’s like Brandon Sanderson’s first law: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands the magic. Spinning Silver could be a textbook in a class on Sanderson’s First Law. There’s even magic that’s not well-understood, which only solves small problems. I’m thinking of the absent witch’s leftover cottage. It’s in two world’s at once, so it can solve some minor character-location plot problems. But we don’t know how or why it works. So when we’re confronted with a major character-location issue, in the very climax, it’s no help. The magic that does help, in that instance, is the magic of self-sacrifice. The rules of which Novik has been busy establishing from the first page.

But that technical excellence is only part of the picture. It’s one thing to construct a perfect plot and a perfect world for it to happen in. Few novelists succeed at that, as it is. But to make it a plot worth reading and a world worth living in! Magnifique!

The obvious fairy tale analogue is Rumpelstiltskin. But what moved me more than that was the shadow of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The Staryk king somehow knows from the beginning that what he needs is the girl who can spin silver into gold. So he takes her. But he doesn’t understand that he needs her as a true wife and true queen; that is, an equal. And his pride and sense of superiority almost leads to the loss of his kingdom. Only when he humbles himself is he saved. Yet without sacrificing his honor or the trust his people put in him.

I also love that Jewish religion and culture has a ‘magic’ of its own that’s equal to that of the Staryk. There’s a wonderful scene where the protagonist uses fairy magic to give a little girl her true name. And it’s a Jewish name. I also love the idea of a Jewish ice fairy dynastic line.



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