Friday Reads: The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

Although I’m already looking ahead to next weekend’s Deweys 24 Hour Readathon, I’m excited to finish this reading month on a high note, with the second book in the Winternight Trilogy: The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden.

 

Keep scrolling for this week’s Book Beginnings and The Friday 56…

 

Book Beginnings is a bookish meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you’re reading, along with your initial thoughts/impressions.

A girl rode a bay horse through a forest late at night. This forest had no name. It lay far from Moscow—far from anything—and the only sound was the snow’s silence and the rattle of frozen trees.

Almost midnight—that wicked, magic hour—on a night menaced by ice and storm and the abyss of the featureless sky. And yet this girl and her horse went on through the wood, dogged.

 

 

The Friday 56 is a bookish meme hosted by Freda’s Voice that asks you to: Grab a book, any book, and turn to page 56 and find a sentence that grabs you.

In winter it is almost impossible to be still. Even sitting by the fire, one is watching the coals, stirring the soup, fighting—always fighting—the eager frost. But in the singing heat, the soft breath of the steam, Vasya’s breath slowed, and slowed again, until she lay quietly in the darkness and the frigid knot of grief insider her loosened. She lay on her back, open-eyed, and the tears ran down her temples, to mingle with her sweat.

 

Right away, Katherine Arden paints a vivid picture of medieval Russia and this magical and wintry world. I’m so excited to see where Vasya’s adventures lead her next. I have a feeling I may end up loving The Girl in the Tower even more than The Bear in the Nightingale.

 

Have you read the Winternight Trilogy? What are you planning to read this weekend?