Book Review: Vassa in the Night

Vassa in the Night by Sarah  Porter

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book was weirdly beautiful and strangely tragic all at once. It's the story of a girl struggling to understand her worth and where she belongs in a world with magic creeping in around her. And I loved it more with each passing page.

Vassa has the kind of snippy bravado and quiet strength that makes for the kind of lead character to root for in a book as strange as this one. Her life is sprinkled with magical facts, like her small wooden doll Erg, who has a habit of stealing, a convenience store that dances on chicken legs, a father that paid good money to become a dog, and a night that is stretching seconds into hours each time it gets dark until it seems almost neverending. All of that is only the more obvious bits of magic in this book.

When Vassa makes the foolish decision to buy light bulbs from her local BY's one night, knowing that her life could be forfeit if she's caught stealing from the store, she manages to hook herself into what appears to be a simple enough bargain: pay off her supposed debt by working 3 nights in the store. The plot slowly builds from there because as in any traditional folktales, nothing is as simple as it seems. Vassa has to deal with walking hands hell bent on making her mess up, a boss that is determined to break her and then work to understand the hold that the store seems to have on the city.

There is so much going on in this book that it's hard to believe that it wrapped up in just under 300 pages. I'm half convinced that Porter pulled the same trick that Babs did with night in the book, cramming at least 500 pages of a beautiful manuscript into what seems to be 296 pages. It just baffles me otherwise to feel like I've been given so much detail and world building in so few pages. The book is just so expertly written, nothing is out of place, every bit is important, the development is wonderful and it feels complete once you reach the end.

It might help to read Vasilisa the Beautiful just to understand the twists and development that Porter developed in her book. However, if you're familiar with folktales, you should be able to appreciate the writing and the characters without it. In the end, I loved this book and when my copy arrives in the mail, it will live on a shelf with the rest of my favorite books.




Rating on my Blog Scale: 10 Stars. I loved this so much, I searched for the best option to buy the hardcover edition of this book. Luckily for me, an awesome independent bookstore I like to order from, Parnassus Books, had a signed copy available to buy and now it lives on a special favorites shelf with other treasured autographed editions I own.

Check out their site for other autographed books that they currently have in stock or even check out what authors are going to visit them in the future. I hope to one day visit the store in person but until then, I will content myself with ordering awesome books from them when I have the option.



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