Finished reading: The Girl in the Tower: A Novel (Winternight Trilogy Book 2) by Katherine Arden 📚

Flew through this one. Really enjoyed it and it left me wanting to dive into the third and final book in the trilogy.

More folk magic and frost-demons.

I collected a few highlights as I read. I’ll drop them here without context so you can enjoy the words and rhythms.

the hiss of the wind mixed with the silence of the snowstorm that is itself a noise.

sunrise had been only a series of shifts: black to blue to gray.

sleep-colored cloak

things made by effort are more real than things made by wishing

not far away-or perhaps very far away-depending on who did the measuring

how can a death-god be alive?

things are or they are not, Vasya. If you want something, it means you do not have it

having the world as you wish-that is for the young. They want too much.

it is going to end, Vasya thought. One day. This world of wonders, where steam in a bathhouse can be a creature that speaks prophecy. One day, there will be only bells and processions. The chyerti will be fog and memory and stirrings in the summer barley.

To small minds any skill must look like sorcery.

the towers of the cathedral were a fistful of magic flames in the light of the setting sun

every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.

in the stillness, the only movement was of smoke, spiraling against the pure sky

witch. The word drfted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name.