The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

*I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinions in any way*

This is Olesya Salnikova Gilmore's debut novel and even with a debut, you can truly tell she has honed her craft and has really done her research into the themes and events of this book because I was blown away and still think about this story, weeks after finishing the book.

This follows Baba Yaga but before she truly became a "Baba" which is a short form of babushka, meaning grandma or old lady. In Yaga's case, it meant old lady for sure. She was often portrayed as this malaligned witch who was an old hag and would steal children and would help for a price, always trying to trick you.

A lot of feminist re-tellings try to take the actions of the women they are speaking about and try to give them what seems like a valid reason. What's so interesting about the voice of Yaga in this book is that she actively mentions the stories she's heard about herself. She doesn't say "oh, I never did that, they're misinformed" but she actually explains the actual situation. She doesn't steal kids, she's not mean and oh boy, she is in no way a "baba". She is misunderstood in the sense that - well, everyone just wants to have someone to blame if anything bad happens and in this case, Yaga is the closest person. She's a half-goddess but mortals don't care about those details - she doesn't follow the new-found Christianity movement, still following the path of the Slavic gods and goddesses, still in tune with nature and using herbs and such to help heal those around her.

I think something that the author did so beautifully was integrate the fairy tales such as the ones about Baba Yaga, Russian history and even Slavic mythology - and it was all done so seamlessly and so beautifully. It didn't seem like anything was out of place or that there was too much of something and too little of another thing - it felt very balanced.

The best part of this book is Yaga herself - you can tell that the author really put her whole heart and soul into this book and especially into the character of Yaga. She is a young half-goddess, branded as a witch and seems to be backstabbed at every turn but she doesn't give up, even if continuing is impossible. Yaga is a multi-layered character with so much knowledge and so much personality. It's an amazing character study of a constantly vilified character and one that also adds another layer to her story with more characters.

The last thing I wanted to mention was the use of Russian words in the text. It's clear that the characters speak Russian but in the text, the author uses Russian words and I think that it really enhances the text even more. Even if someone didn't speak Russian whatsoever and read this book, I think they would still understand the sentence as a whole even if they don't know some of the words. Additionally, my heart warmed at the usage of diminutives because those are not often seen in books even if they are ones that are Russian fantasy inspired because a lot of people don't know that we have those in Russian.

This has become my favourite book of the year and I would give it a million stars if I could. I think it's also become my favourite book of all time.

Rating: 5/5 stars

Love,

Mila