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Spinning Silver
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik is $2.99! This is a lovely fantasy with romantic elements. My friend and I recently discussed Novik and comparisons between Uprooted and Spinning Silver. We feel Spinning Silver was the better of the two, but both are still REALLY GOOD. What are your thoughts?
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders… but her father isn’t a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife’s dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty–until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers’ pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed–and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.
But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it’s worth–especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.
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The Duke I Tempted
The Duke I Tempted by Scarlett Peckham is 99c! This book has been featured in Hide Your Wallet and Book Beat because of all it’s catnip. There’s a botanist heroine, a marriage of convenience and a submissive hero. A lot of my romance reading friends have enjoyed this one as well. Have you read it? What’d you think?
He’s controlled. Meticulous. Immaculate. No one would expect the proper Duke of Westmead to be a member of London’s most illicit secret club. Least of all: his future wife.
Having overcome financial ruin and redeemed his family name to become the most legendary investor in London, the Duke of Westmead needs to secure his holdings by producing an heir. Which means he must find a wife who won’t discover his secret craving to spend his nights on his knees – or make demands on his long scarred-over heart.
Poppy Cavendish is not that type of woman. An ambitious self-taught botanist designing the garden ballroom in which Westmead plans to woo a bride, Poppy has struggled against convention all her life to secure her hard-won independence. She wants the capital to expand her exotic nursery business – not a husband.
But there is something so compelling about Westmead, with his starchy bearing and impossibly kind eyes — that when an accidental scandal makes marriage to the duke the only means to save her nursery, Poppy worries she wants more than the title he is offering. The arrangement is meant to be just business. A greenhouse for an heir. But Poppy yearns to unravel her husband’s secrets – and to tempt the duke to risk his heart.
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Intercepted
Intercepted by Alexa Martin is $2.99! This sports romance is the first book in Martin’s Playbook series and was her debut romance. Readers seemed to love Martin’s voice and writing style, but wish the pacing were a bit better in this one.
Marlee thought she scored the man of her dreams only to be scorched by a bad breakup. But there’s a new player on the horizon, and he’s in a league of his own…
Marlee Harper is the perfect girlfriend. She’s definitely had enough practice by dating her NFL-star boyfriend for the last ten years. But when she discovers he has been tackling other women on the sly, she vows to never date an athlete again. There’s just one problem: Gavin Pope, the new hotshot quarterback and a fling from the past, has Marlee in his sights.
Gavin fights to show Marlee he’s nothing like her ex. Unfortunately, not everyone is ready to let her escape her past. The team’s wives, who never led the welcome wagon, are not happy with Marlee’s return. They have only one thing on their minds: taking her down. But when the gossip makes Marlee public enemy number one, she worries about more than just her reputation.
Between their own fumbles and the wicked wives, it will take a Hail Mary for Marlee and Gavin’s relationship to survive the season.
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Tiger Eye
Tiger Eye by Marjorie M. Liu is $2.99! An older paranormal romance, this is the first book in the Dirk & Steele series, which focuses on a super secret detective agency. Though the pacing tended to slow at times, many readers loved the world Liu created.
He looks out of place in Dela Reese’s Beijing hotel room- exotic and poignant, some mythic, tragic hero of an epic tale. With his feline yellow eyes, he’s like nothing from her world. Yet Dela has danced through the echo of his soul and knows this warrior will obey her every command.
Hari has been used and abused for millennia. But he sees, upon his release from the riddle box, that this new mistress is different. There is a hidden power in Dela’s eyes- and with her, he may regain all that was lost to him. Where once he savaged, now he must protect; where once he only knew hatred, now he must embrace love. Dela is the key. For Dela, he will risk all.
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The Peckham and Martin are great!
I have never been able to bring myself to read Spinning Silver, the novel, because I thought “Spinning Silver,” the story, was simply perfection and didn’t need to be a word longer. Can someone who’s read both persuade me that the novel actually adds something?
@Vasha:
I’ve read both. It’s completely different than the book (which I adore). They share the same premise/start, but there is so much more insight into Miryem’s character and family history. The ending is completely different. The novel has three intersecting storylines, one of which is Miryem’s. It’s ultimately a story of three women saving themselves and the world.
I’m having difficulty answering your question because the novel has a 100x more plot and characterization than the short story. I view them as completely different entities.
A word of warning: if you are are expecting the short story with more words, you will not get it. They are different, both in vision, conflict, and themes. The short story’s basic premise certainly exists in the book, but it’s small compared to the overarching themes and storytelling of the novel. Don’t try and anticipate the plot based on the short story, because you will be disappointed.
I love the book and I think you should at least try it. If you loved the short story, odds are that you’ll enjoy the full length novel.
I totally LOVE Marjorie Liu’s Dirk & Steele series — and I hope hope hope that this deal means that she is thinking of continuing with it. The premise of each novel had me rolling my eyes — to the point that I was amazed that I didn’t fall over backwards from the weight of my own pupils. Genies from lamps as love interests? OK. Mermen? Ok. Empaths paired with Russian mafia guys? Ok. The premises pushed me away but every novel drew me in. I know she’s been writing for Marvel and some of her work was the basis for the old Wolverine movie (can I remember the name of it? no, I cannot). Anyway, if you think you can be hooked into a wonderful romance despite a crazysauce premise, give this a try!
I think I might like Uprooted more? But they were such different books it’s kind of hard to tell. I think my problem was that I went in to reading Spinning Silver thinking it would be like Uprooted and then the way the storylines happened wasn’t what I expected. I was just typing out another issue I had with the book, went, hmm, but that’s not really justifiable and now I think I’ll have to read it again to be sure. Basically, I liked it, and would have liked it more if I hadn’t expected it to be like Uprooted.
@Emily I agree somewhat–I absolutely LOVED Uprooted. I think I went into Spinning Silver expecting it to be the same, and it was so different that I had trouble getting into it. For a while I was just reading it out of fascination with the writing, wanting to see how she was going to weave together all these different storylines and narrators. But about 40% of the way in, the story grabbed me and did not let go. By the end I thought I might like it better than Uprooted after all! After re-reading both, I have decided that I just love them both, but for very different reasons.
I can’t pick a “best”/favorite between the two Novik books. Both are very good.
Silver didn’t give me the overwhelming joy that Uprooted did. However, I loved Miryem and her ‘pay what you owe’ attitude. I think of Silver as a little grittier, but I still loved it.
I listen to audiobooks, and I found the Uprooted narrator really hard to get into, really detracted from the experience, but pushed through because I enjoyed the book so much. The narrator for Spinning Silver was fantastic, AND I liked that even more than I liked Uprooted!
I liked Uprooted more, but also enjoyed Spinning Silver. I think my main issue with SS is that I didn’t buy the ending. Miryem’s main contact with the king is him demanding ever more gold be spun, then suddenly that ending? (I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read the book) It just seemed to come out of the blue. I also wanted more of an explanation of his world, and his obsession with gold. But they are both very well written, and each enjoyable in their own way.
For me, Spinning Silver is technically the better book. I like multiple POVs and felt the pacing and the climax worked much better in SS. However, I really love Sarkan and there is no one scene in SS that I love as much as the post rosemary/lemon cure scene in Uprooted. (So really I’m on Team LoveEmBoth with everyone else.)
A shout out for Tiger Eye by Marjorie Liu. Although the second novel is still my favorite (and the reason I have to visit Vladivostok someday) the first one is also memorable and a good read.
And here’s another vote for continuing the series – please please do!
Elisa Braden’s ‘The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4)’ is $.99 on Amazon (usually $3.99).
And I liked Uprooted but did not finish Spinning Silver!
For those who love Marjorie Liu and wondering what she’s doing instead of continuing the Dirk and Steele series, her current opus (yes, opus) is the graphic novel series Monstress. Fantasy horror, no romance as far as I can tell, but it’s brilliant and gorgeous.
I one-click-boughth The Duke I Tempted when I saw botanist, and sort of read over the description of his character.
And wow was that a pleasant surprise.
I loved both Novik books and both settings, but while Uprooted was in a rather generalized Mirkwood-esque fantasy forest, I really felt the cold and menace of the mythicized Lithuania in Spinning Silver. Also both Agnieszka and Miryem are fighting for more than their own fate, but it was more present in Miryem’s case. Right from the start when all she is fighting for is her family’s next meal. If I was told to choose one I could read again and one I would never read again, I couldn’t.
This site is actually what introduced me to Naomi Novik as an author. I love both Uprooted and Spinning Silver, but to me they had different “feels” to them as books. I thought Uprooted had a fantasy horror element, whereas Spinning Silver was more fantasy fairy tale. I had trouble putting either of them down once I got into the meat of the story. Both books are only very loosely influenced by the fairy tales they are based off of – you can identify the stories that Novik used as a starting point for inspiration, but her book then wanders off and develops its own unique plotline/characters/setting.
That is the one and only Liu book I read and it gave me very squicky vibes about the way she described the Asian hero. A very fetishy yellow fever, inscrutable Asian vibe. I was puzzled because I assumed, given her last name, that I was just being sensitive to something not there, but as far as I can tell from looking up her bio this is not an #ownvoices novel, and it shows. OTOH, I loved the Peckham book and appreciated how she depicted the scientist heroine. It was refreshing.
Ok I’m wrong, maybe I’m mixing her up with someone else! But I remember really not liking that book. Shrug. Carry on…
I thought Spinning Silver was a better book, but I enjoyed Uprooted more. I’m surprised to see I’m not the only one!
Spinning Silver sort of ruined The Bear and the Nightingale for me, though. Not that The Bear and the Nightingale was bad. I just really felt like I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t read Spinning Silver first.
Thanks for the many great comments on Novik’s work. I love both Uprooted and Spinning Silver, but prefer the latter and find it, with its interweaving plots and values for even minor characters, the more impressive and warm-hearted (!) book.