Vita Nostra

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The best way to describe this book is to picture a magical system where everything has a cost-- sometimes a very sinister one. Sasha is scouted at a beach while on vacation by a sinister figure who tells her that she must train herself to go to this special school or bad things will happen. She doesn't take the warning as seriously as she should, and sure enough, bad things happen. This is a prevailing theme in the novel, as you'll see, where if students disobey the mandates of the faculty, they find themselves at the mercy of something that seems a bit too sinisterly deterministic to be fate. The Execution (1999) ( Russian: Казнь) received a "The Wаnderer" [16] award in 2000 and the Reader Appreciation award "Sigma-F" [17] in 2000 as the Novel of the Year.

The Pentacle ( Russian: Пентакль), co-written A. Valentinov ( Russian: А.Валентиновым) and G. L. Oldi ( Russian: Г. Л. Олди), was awarded the "Golden Caduceus" prize at the 2005 Star Bridge festival.The first being the magic system itself (if you would even call it magic? They certainly never did, but then again they never explained anything in simple terms). The somewhat magical education was convoluted on purpose, a meticulously confusing mesh of all areas of study that seem to take you beyond human experience. All descriptions are abstract, and instead of explaining how something works it often felt like the tutors would merely repeat “do you understand?” until one day our characters did. It definitely felt like a book you simply had to go along with and hope for the best. At the very least, we know Sasha’s harmony creates a new world. But the rest is entirely subjective. There are concepts that cannot be imagined but can be named. Having received a name, they change, they flow into a different entity, and cease to correspond to the name, and then they can be given another, different name, and this process— the spellbinding process of creation— is indefinite: this is the word that names it, and this is the word that signifies. A concept as an organism, and text as the universe. Burned Tower (1998) ( Russian: Горелая Башня) received a prize at Interpresscon competition in 1999. At the same time they're both the Chosen Ones, each in his/her own way. They're both special and they get a lot of pressure because of that. But it's so different for them.

Alexandra "Sasha" Samokhina is a 17-year-old straight-A student, preparing to apply to university. She's been a good girl, a dutiful daughter to her single mother. Then one day a stranger appears while she and her mother are on vacation at the beach, and makes an unusual demand of her. He demands she swim naked out to a bouy every morning at exactly 4 a.m. Age of the Witch (1997) ( Russian: Ведьмин век) involves characters from a number of mythologies, most prominently Slavonic. It received a literature award from the magazine Rainbow ( Russian: Радуга) in 1997 and the "Zilantkon" -"Great Zilant" [15] prize ( Russian: Зиланткон — Большой Зилант) in Kazan in 1998.I don't think I can give the right explanation, and it is weird that the word "Explanation" is needed here, but it is, for this very interesting and unique book. While I was reading the first half of the book, the only other book I could compare it in my more recent reading history, was The Magicians series, but much better written and much more thought out. Then about the 60% mark things become bigger, become more...!!! It is not a book of things that happen, but a compilation of the emotional and mental experiences of a person with unlimited potential, going through and destroying the barriers in themselves on the way to reaching that potential... It is about the experience of self discovery and our relation to the world around us. It is about breaking oneself down to their basic components and rebuilding themselves according to their will and imagination. It is big, larger than life, reaching for omnipotence...!!!! And it is experienced through the nerve endings and sensory input and output of a teenage woman who, as most of us would, wants to retain the idea of who and what she is, but is driven by her insatiable hunger for knowledge and the rewards and losses that come with that... Julia Meitov Hersey, the translator of Vita Nostra, describes her effort as a work of love, undertaken so that other English language readers will be able to enjoy the delights the Russian-language book first brought her. The book has been described as an “anti-Harry Potter novel”, and insofar as it offers a darker, more mysterious, and philosophical version of the ‘magical recruit’ trope, this is true. But it’s far and away a very different beast from J. K. Rowling’s celebrated series. Although it fits squarely in the popular school-for-magicians genre, this dark, ambitious, and intellectually strenuous novel will feel like a fresh revelation to fantasy readers glutted with Western wish-fulfillment narratives. a b c "Maryna & Serhiy Dyachenko - "A-BA-BA-GA-LA-MA-GA" Publishers". ababahalamaha.com.ua . Retrieved 19 September 2022. In a very real sense — more real than most so-called "Young Adult" novels — Vita Nostra is a novel for young adults. It's about becoming an adult, and discovering truly hard tasks where failure actually has consequences, and doing so amidst the swirling temptations of song, dance, parties, alcohol and sex. It's about the confusion of not knowing what you're going to be when you grow up, of seeing yourself as a free-willed individual with choices lying ahead of you and then discovering that you are at the mercy of forces you cannot control or negotiate with. It's about trying not to lose the parent-child bond even when you are forced to let go.