Read History
2026 | Score: 3
A russian inspired retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale. Normally I enjoy concepts like this but I just got absolutely nothing out of this. Just a boring story, despite having a lot of elements that feel like they could have been really interesting. The different faeries and magics should have created really engaging scenes and human interaction, but all the parts that would have been cool just got brushed over or ignored. Most of the characters were annoying in one way or another. This is a book I really can not understand why so many people like.
Format: Audible
Days: 5
Date: 6/23/2026 -> 6/28/2026
Summary (Spoilers)
Spinning Silver
Naomi Novik
Spinning Silver Summary
Miryem Mandelstam is the daughter of the moneylender in a small village. Her father is too kind hearted to force people to pay their debts to him so her family is poor and struggling in a harsh winter. Eventually Miryem decides to just do it herself and makes people pay her what is owed with interest or she will report them to the authorities. She makes her family quite wealthy, but this angers the village and her parents seem upset with her attitude. Her mother is the daughter of a wealthy moneylender who lives in the nearby city of Vysnia. Miryem and her mother visit him and he congratulates her on her success and gives her advice to keep advancing her business.
Wanda is the daughter of a farmer near the village Miryem lives in. Her father borrowed money a while back so Miryem comes to collect, but they can’t pay, so Wanda goes to work off the debt acting as a servant for Miryem and her family. She learns to read and do math, and eventually Miryem starts to pay her and gets her young brother Stepon to come watch the goats and pays him also. They hide this money from their father, who is an abusive alcoholic. Their mother died a while ago and is buried under a white tree in their yard, and they feel they can speak to her still near the tree.
One day while coming back from Vysnia, Miryem brags she can turn silver to gold, and shortly thereafter a Staryk (Faerie winter creature), shows up and gives her a bag of 6 silver coins to turn to gold. She goes to Vysnia and has a local jeweler, Isaac turn the Staryk silver (different from regular silver) into a ring and sells it for 10 gold to the Duke of Vysnia. Later the Staryk comes with 60 silver which they turn into a necklace and sell to the Duke. He plans to use them as adornments for his daughter, Irina, in an attempt to marry her to the Tsar. He makes them promise to make her a crown next and sell it to him, which they do with Staryk’s next delivery of silver.
Miryam has turned silver to gold three times so the Staryk (Who turns out to be their king), takes her and forces her to be his bride in the Staryk land. You can only travel between the lands by magic, and it is always cold winter in Staryk lands. Miryam does not want to go and is treated poorly by everyone, but she can now actually turn silver to gold via magic so she is useful. She makes the king promise to answer 3 questions each night.
Irina, the daughter of the duke, feels a connection to the Staryk silver jewelry that she is given. She does not want to marry the Tsar but everyone she meets when wearing her jewelry thinks she is the most beautiful woman ever, so her father invites the Tsar over. He is known to be a sorcerer by some people, but when he meets Irina he agrees to marry her instantly, even without all her jewelry which is odd. The night after they are wed, Irina is scared and discovers she can travel via mirrors into the Staryk realm while wearing her jewelry, and hides from the Tsar. She sees that he has a demon inside him and it wants to eat her, but it can only come out at night, so she must hide each night in mirrors.
Wanda has continued to care for Miryam’s parents even with her gone to the Staryk, but one day she returns home to find her father has promised her hand in marriage to the son of the local vodka maker guy, in exchange for regular shipments of liquor. She says no and he is about to beat her badly with a poker when her older brother Sergey comes home and hits their father. He falls into the fire and dies. The vodka guy saw this and runs back to the village, and due to the rules of the time Wanda and Sergey will be executed for killing their father so they are forced to flee. They send Stepon to stay with the Mandelstam’s where he will be safe, but before he leaves he takes an acorn from the white tree where their mother is buried.. They flee and find a small cottage in the woods with some food around it, although it seems to be magic/haunted or something so they try to be respectful and repair stuff around it and make extra food.
Meanwhile, Irina and now her old maid are hiding from the Tsar one night in the Staryk realm, when Miryam sees them while on a sleigh ride. She takes them to a nearby cottage (The same one Wanda and Sergey are in, just in the Staryk realm instead of the mortal), and they stay awhile. Miryam and Irina make a plan to get the Demon in the Tsar and the Staryk king in the same room and hopefully have them kill each other. In three days they will meet at Isaac the jeweler’s wedding. This is simple for Irina since she is Tsarina and can make people do stuff, but Miryam must make a bargain with her king. He says if she can turn all the silver in three storerooms to gold he will go. There is too much so she makes some servants empty one of the storerooms of all its silver, and in exchange she will give them gold. It works and she barely pulls it off so they head to the wedding.
Meanwhile, Miryam’s parents and Stepon are heading to Vysnia for the wedding since Isaac is marrying their niece, and on the way they get lost and meet up with Wanda and Sergey who join them. They all stay in Miryam’s grandpa's nice house and experience wealth and luxury. Then the wedding happens and the demon and Staryk show up and do battle. We learn the demon's name is Chernobog. The Staryk king seems to win but then Wanda wraps him in a chain and the demon lights a ring of candles around him, and the humans use the power of love to bind the king. The demon will slowly feast on him every day (Instead of Irina), but this will kill the Staryk kingdom and Miryam cares about them now, so she hatches a new plan.
Her family and Wanda’s leave (They got a note from the tsar pardoning them for the father incident), and pretend to take Miryam with them but actually she sneaks out and frees the Staryk King in exchange for him not hurting mortals as much. He is stabbed in the escape and they all stop at the cottage where Wanda and Sergey stayed earlier to recover. When the Chernobog learns of this he makes Irina take him into the Staryk lands so he can attack them directly. Stepon gives Miryam his white acorn and she passes into the Staryk realm where Irina is, and Irina plants it, growing a new tree that heals the king and allows him to return to his lands and fight Chernobog.
Chernobog has gained a lot of power but Miryam throws a bunch of silver on him then turns it to gold which is bad for him because of sunlight or something and he is forced to retreat to the mortal realm. Irina meets him there but he can’t hurt anyone because they are under her protection as tsarina and she makes him leave the Tsar’s body so everyone is happy. Back in the Staryk lands they rebuild and Miryam now loves them, so when she is brought home next winter the king asks her parents for her hand in marriage and she agrees and everything is perfect. THE END.