This is another YA novel about a special girl, a world of the spirits, and defying the norm. The flavour is Russian this time as the story takes place in the 14th century Rus, when Moscow is gathering allies to fight back against the yoke of the Golden Horde.

I loved the premise and the world of ghe creatures familiar from childhood stories, like Morozko, domovoi, rusalka, but the story didn’t go deeper than that for me, neither into history, nor culture.
The whole thing seemed like a clanking mishmash of fairy tale characters, allusions, and Russian words. The only indicator that the story takes place in the Slavic North is the words, use of which, like izba for house seemed to me unnecessary. Other than that, there are the usual tropes of wilderness, snow, bears, heavy drinking, bad roads, and women that “would stop a galloping horse and enter a burning izba.”
I persevered just because I grew up on Russian fairy tales as a child and felt nostalgic for those characters. I finished only by skipping pages in the end so as not to die of boredom and too much action.
The good part is the description of a wild, winter country - great if you want an easy read with a snowy atmosphere.