Review by Booklist Review
Contemporary Moscow, from its impoverished neighborhoods to its grandest squares, is the setting for Sedia's strikingly imaginative first novel. Just released from a mental hospital, Galina, a young translator and recovering schizophrenic, doesn't quite believe her eyes when her pregnant sister abruptly gives birth and changes into a fleeing jackdaw. Yet others across the city witness similar transformations, including Yakov, a neighborhood detective assigned to investigate a disturbing epidemic of missing-person cases. When street artist Fyodor stumbles on a surprising clue to the avian mystery, Galina and Yakov follow him through a magic portal visible only in window reflections and into an underground world of forgotten misfits and mythical creatures. In their search for Galina's missing sister, the trio encounters pagan deities, water nymphs, exiled dissidents, and Yakov's long-lost grandfather all entombed in a subterranean world in which Russia's turbulent history mingles with its rich ethnic mythology. Sedia's beautifully nuanced prose delivers both a uniquely enchanting fantasy and a thoughtful allegory that probes the Russian national psyche.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sedia (According to Crow) applies urban fantasy templates to her Russian setting with mixed success in her second stand-alone novel. Masha, the cheerfully normal sister of vision-prone translator Galina, turns into a jackdaw and flies off, leaving her just-born child behind. Joined by police detective Yakov Richards, Galina tracks the missing Masha into an underground milieu where lost souls mingle with beings out of Russian folklore. A host of secondary characters rapidly clutter the narrative and cloud its focus, and Sedia's persistently curt prose favors contemporary atmosphere over mythic resonance, diminishing Koschey the Deathless and Zemun the Celestial Cow to near-mundane status. Modern blue-collar Moscow is pitch-perfect, however: bustling yet seedy, disorganized and none too respectable. While undeniably authentic, the cynical tone may alienate many Western readers before they reach the startling but well-grounded climax. On the whole, this wholeheartedly Russian tale is most compelling as social commentary. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Flavorsome fantasy set in the hidden underworld of newly capitalist Russia, from an ex-Muscovite and current New Jersey resident. Galina, a medical translator, lives in Moscow with her pregnant younger sister, Masha, when Masha suddenly gives birth in the bathroom, then turns into a jackdaw and flies away, leaving a baby boy squalling on the floor. Because of her history of mental illness, Galina's reluctant to report this--until she meets Fyodor, an alcoholic artist with a fear of gypsies, who says he knows where the bird-people go. Galina, determined to find her sister, finally reports Masha's disappearance--not the jackdaw part--to policeman Yakov, who himself that morning observed a man turn into a crow. Fyodor shows Galina and Yakov a magical doorway into underground Moscow, a realm inhabited by demigods and spirits from Old Russian folklore, transformed bird-people and others in ageless human form who found powerful reasons to escape the world above--such as Yakov's English grandfather, David, who was hounded by the secret police. After meeting Zemun the Celestial Cow, Father Frost, spirits of forest and water and other, much stranger beings, the three inspect a corpse that by some means crossed from the world above. Once resurrected by Koschey the Deathless, Sergey the corpse tells them about his gangster boss, Slava, and the latter's evil associates--who, somehow, may be responsible for all the weird events. Great character sketches and plenty of magic-realist incidents, all set forth in charmingly Russian-accented prose. Missing a structured plot, however, the story lacks an essential firmness. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
