Vassa in the Night

Vassa in the Night

By Sarah Porter

 

When Vassa’s stepsister sends her out to buy lightbulbs in the middle of the night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters―and sometimes innocent shoppers as well.

But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough-talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach, and ferocious cunning. With Erg’s help, Vassa just might be able to break the witch’s curse and free her Brooklyn neighborhood. But Babs won’t be playing fair….

I really wanted to like this one, but almost from the beginning I found myself disenchanted with it.  Part of my problem I think, is that the author assumes more familiarity with the original Russian folk tale than I had.  Even though we had flashbacks to Vassa's mother, father, Babs/Bea's relationship and Picnic and Pangolin, none of them really explained what was going on with the BY franchises, why Babs and Bea weren't friends (or how they'd become friends in the first place, and what kinds of powers each had), or how Vassa fit into the continuation of these events from the past.  Erg, the doll, tied Vassa to the magical world, but also, Erg was where Vassa put her own feelings in when her mother died? So, then, if the Erg feelings are absorbed back into Vassa, does that mean that Vassa is no longer drawn to the magical world? Because that's the reverse of how those things usually work: you have to become a complete person before your magic works correctly is a time-honored trope of the genre.  And for good reason!  It makes sense, unlike this book.

Characters just float in and out of the book, and frequently we'll be in the middle of a scene just to cut away and be abruptly transferred to a "night/dream" sequence and never really resolve or wrap up the first scene.  It was very disjointed, and didn't feel intentional.  If it was intentional, great, I hated it.

I also objected to the dialogue and characterization.  Is this chick fifteen? Why does she sound so stilted when talking to people? Why is she so casual about the decapitated people in the bodega parking lot (why is everyone so casual about the decapitated people in the parking lot)? Apparently magic is acknowledged and recognized in this world, but when obviously bad magic is extending night-time and a local franchise is murdering people, uh, the reaction is to watch more tv? Okay, fine, I guess.  But seriously, everyone's frankly ho-hum attitude is a really weird choice to make for the author.  It's like, how serious is this problem? Clearly no one else cares, so why should we?  Even to the point that teenagers are playing games with the store where the potential risk is getting their head (or other parts) cut off?  Everyone's decisions and thought processes in this book are just...confusing.  In a bad way.  

Dexter and Sinister, the disembodied hands for example.  Are they unwilling agents of Babs Yagg? Cooperative villains? Dexter has a change of heart and decides to help Vassa and get itself killed in the process for.. what reason, exactly? Because Babs is mean to him (again)? Or is it because the plot required it?

And there's a lot of people complaining that Vassa didn't actually do much (or anything) herself to solve the tasks given to her, which is also true.  Vassa's primary purpose was going into the store in the first place, and after that... unclear how she derives any character development since she blacks out a lot and the problem gets solved without her involvement.  And frequently, she creates these problems, by having no damn sense.  She see-saws between unbelievable naivety about her situation and the dangers, and some sort of "inner understanding" of all things.

I think there's the germ of a good book in there, but I was pretty disappointed by this one.

 

Wicked Saints

Wicked Saints

By Emily Duncan

A girl who can speak to gods must save her people without destroying herself.

A prince in danger must decide who to trust.

A boy with a monstrous secret waits in the wings.

Together, they must assassinate the king and stop the war.

In a centuries-long war where beauty and brutality meet, their three paths entwine in a shadowy world of spilled blood and mysterious saints, where a forbidden romance threatens to tip the scales between dark and light.

 

 So, partway into this book, I was like, "This is boring." A most grievous sin!  It did pick up a bit when the various people made it into Tranavia, but honestly, the book did not live up to that spectacular cover, which, ah, is obviously not supposed to be the reason you judge books, but by golly, that's a good looking cover.  

Anyway, we get introduced to three main characters: "the cleric" - a young woman who is apparently the only magic person in Kalyana, "the prince" - who is the crown prince of Tranavia and trying to kill the cleric to end the war between the two countries, except that only lasts for about one chapter and then he's called home to be a human sacrifice for his father, and "the monster" who isn't given any POV narrative, so we know he's hiding something, which is that he's apparently the leader of the magical cult in Tranavia which gave the king the idea to kill his son to win god-like powers in the first place and then... felt bad about it? Except it was all a fake-out so he could leave and come back, cleric in tow, and then ended up using the cleric to kill the king so he could take the king's powers... I don't know, it was kind of a mish-mash by that point.

Look, I know it's the start of a trilogy, and you gotta save something in the tank for the next two books, but this didn't entice me to keep going, even though it had more action than Black Sun (one of my bigger complaints about Black Sun).  I never really cared about the characters, there was no real oomph to it.  So it opens with the cleric's monastery getting attacked by the prince, and then she flees, and that part was all great, but then the prince gets called back home and she meets up with a conveniently placed band of travelers, who happen to include people going over to kill the king, and she just, trusts them immediately, tells them who she is, and goes along with the plan.  Well, okay, then. 

The most we get to know about the prince (even though he narrates a good chunk of the book) is that he likes to drink and his father wants to kill him, which makes him sad.  That revelation means absolutely nothing, since we're barely given any other insight as to their relationship - was it always bad, is he mad about this, will this upset his mother, etc., etc. He doesn't even visit his mother when he gets back, just a witch who does prophecies (for plot reasons, I assume).  There's no familial feeling, so I'm not getting any anguish when he decides he needs to kill (rather than be killed by) his own father.  None of these characters had any personalities! The prince came the closest, and his main character trait was "drunk".  

And the cleric's voices in her head/gods thing is confusing.  I assume that will be explained later in the additional books, but you've got to have more background than: "this country thinks gods run everything,  this other country does it's own magic, both think the other are awful, and there's some random "god" people forgot about who is also doing...something and also the gods are actually demons." And the cleric uses the power the gods send her to do magic, but apparently she doesn't need them and can just do it on her own, soooo.... they're just chatter boxes? Then how come they don't whisper in everyone's ears? Seems really inefficient, if they're trying to take over another country to rely on just like, one lady.  Are we to assume that there's other people who also believe they are the hands of the gods, but are just, you know, chilling? If the god/demons have some agenda, they're certainly not doing much to move it forward.

This just didn't grab me, and that's not even about all the reviews that are comparing it a knock-off of the Grisha-verse, because I didn't like that series either.  I did read the whole Grisha thing though (albeit in chunks so it felt very disjointed).  This one, I think I'm calling it a day.

Disappearing Earth

Disappearing Earth

By Julia Phillips

One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls--sisters, eight and eleven--go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.

Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty--densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska--and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.

This one I liked, but it was so slow in the middle sections that I kept peeking at the end, so I could get an idea of whether we were actually headed somewhere, or just going in circles on this kidnapping thing. And for the record, we are going somewhere.  But it sure didn't feel like that for most of the (honestly, relatively short) book.

And the payoff is pretty good, actually!  As we follow a bunch of Kamchatka Penninsula residents for a year after the disappearance of two young girls, we wrap up a bunch of semi-disparate storylines in the last big section, "June".  What was interesting to me was that it looked like a lot of the chapters had been published in advance (some years and years before the book was published), so I wasn't sure if the author had taken a bunch of semi-random stories about Kamchatka women and re-worked them into a kidnapping mystery.

An interesting tidbit is that Julia Phillips isn't from Kamchatka; she's from the U.S., but she spent a few years on the penninsula (or maybe less, it's not quite clear, and she went at different times) and this does read very much more like a U.S. novel than a Russian book (from my admittedly low experience).  In fact, more than anything else, it reminds me of the movie, Wind River, which is about the discovery of a young native woman in the snow on an isolated Wyoming reservation.   The cold, isolation, uneasy and troubled relationship between native and non-native, the role of women in that environment. I didn't even realize till I was reading a description halfway through that all the viewpoints are women, but I did like it - it feels safer, somehow, in a world which can be very harsh, and particularly so here.

Since Phillips isn't writing a mystery, more of a character study, she leaves the ending a bit more optimistic than I think is warranted. Someone who steals an eighteen year old and four years later kidnaps two young girls and the first woman is still there (and alive) a year after the girls arrive? It strains belief.  But it feels  more satisfying this way, I suppose - and you get to go back and kind of track hints and appearances by various characters briefly in others' stories.

The setting is also semi-different. Honestly, considering it's set on the Kamchatka peninsula, I feel like the author tells us that it's isolated and cold and special more than we maybe see it in the narrative - maybe because the viewpoint characters are all in town (even if they're native), we don't get as much a sense of the "interior" as much.  Town is town, after all, and towns everywhere are kind of the same. 

Be Prepared

Be Prepared

By Vera Brosgol

All Vera wants to do is fit in―but that’s not easy for a Russian girl in the suburbs. Her friends live in fancy houses and their parents can afford to send them to the best summer camps. Vera’s single mother can’t afford that sort of luxury, but there's one summer camp in her price range―Russian summer camp.

Vera is sure she's found the one place she can fit in, but camp is far from what she imagined. And nothing could prepare her for all the "cool girl" drama, endless Russian history lessons, and outhouses straight out of nightmares!

This is a middle-school readers semi-autobiographical graphic novel about nine year old Vera, who, finding herself not fitting in amongst her (non-Russian) schoolmates after a disastrous sleepover, begs her mom to send her and her brother to Russian scout camp - where she unhappily discovers that there's just never a guaranteed way of fitting in and making friends.

This was going to be a Ten Second Review but - as you'll notice - I got a little expressive and the review got a little lengthy.

I really loved this book. It's beautifully illustrated, with muted colors and expressive faces, but more than that, it really gets to the heart of a common pre-teen girl (and boy) experience: beginning to compare yourself and your family to others and feeling awkward or embarrassed or just plain uncool.

I remember myself the pain of having to leave a slumber party early (god, ALL the slumber party shit.  Why do I still love the idea of slumber parties when all of my memories are of like, extreme embarrassment? WHAT PYJAMAS YOU WEAR DETERMINES YOUR SOCIAL STATUS FOR LIFE AND LET'S NOT EVEN TALK ABOUT THE DELICATE ART OF GIFT-GIVING), and the like, social minefield that is your pre-teens and early teens. Why no, I haven't been scarred at all by events that happened decades ago and I definitely don't still remember the excruciating details of another twelve year old making fun of me (with what is, in retrospect, not even good sarcasm).

And I - OH MY GOD I just remembered how much I hated bringing my sleeping bag  - which was flannel and super bulky and had to be wrapped up with elastics tied together because they had worn out and snapped - when my friend had, like, the speedo of sleeping bags - shiny, tiny, with its own cover bag to stuff it into. It was teal and hi-tech and shaped like a coffin, not a rectangle (remember that I don't make the rules about what is cool, I just know that coffin shaped sleeping bags are cooler than rectangles, or at least they were back in the mid-90s) and so fucking cool and everything my sleeping bag wasn't and I bet you my friend had not one clue that I was dying inside about her sleeping bag. She's happily married now with a really cute baby girl who slept on me for like an hour during dinner once, which was amazing and I highly recommend, and I really hope I have enough willpower not to message her and be like, "REMEMBER YOUR SLEEPING BAG FROM TWENTY YEARS AGO? I think I'm finally working out my feelings about it!"

I'm going to move on from my own traumas for like, one hot second, to reiterate that Be Prepared makes me want to, like, go back and relive my youth except now, I would be able to unclench and actually enjoy it more, having learned the hard lesson that is growing up and becoming (and loving) your own self.  Be Prepared achieves the hard balance of getting to the heart of these seemingly insurmountable embarrassments and cruelties (which are in hindsight pretty minor) without actually wallowing in it or becoming too schadenfreude-y.  This is not cringe-kink (ew, gross, I hate this word I just made up and will never use it again). 


I will definitely be reading more from Brosgol (I already have Anya's Ghost waiting for me at the library), and if you want to relive your youth, without actually, you know, reliving it, please pick this book up.  

Ironically, the girl whose slumber party I left early now leads hiking expeditions into the wilderness for young women. What a wonderful world.

A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow

By Amor Towles

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Allow me to briefly rave: I think this was one of the most engrossing and well-written books I've read all year. I read the whole thing in a day and felt immensely satisfied.  [I will admit, that with a few days' distance, it feels less monumental, more ordinary.  I do think though, that it's a book that would hold up well to re-reading.  There's so much detail and digressions that someone who really wanted to savor every single line would be in hog heaven.]

As always, the books I enjoy get short shrift in these reviews - how many ways can you say: "plot, yes, characters, yes, writing, yes, good, good, good, checks all boxes"?  To paraphrase another great (Russian) author: "Good books are all alike; every bad book is bad in its own way."  So while I can nitpick and critique endlessly on other books, what is there to say here to won't be repetitive?

Well, nothing is perfect: here are some nitpicks to soothe your heart:

I was originally put off by the very poor map at the beginning but not to worry: you don't need a map of Moscow because everything takes place inside one building. Why there is a map of Moscow in this book, I don't know, what we need is a floorplan. Except not really, because most of the action takes place in a few rooms.  But (here we wind back into plaudits again, my apologies) the genius of Towles is that we don't feel cramped by the setting.  As readers, we're taken along with Rostov on his emotional journey, from his lovely suite on the lower floors to the abandoned servants quarters up on six when get gets sentenced, and the tightening of his life, until we reach the nadir in 1926, when he decides to join the staff, and the world opens up again (figuratively - I mean, he's still stuck in the hotel).

I do think though that you can clearly tell the book wasn't written by a Russian - there's a lot of humor in it that isn't pure black. It's a much gentler book than I think would be written by a Russian.  It is certainly possible that Mr. Solzhenitsyn's style has overriden my averages, but it feels impossible that Gentleman in Moscow and Cancer Ward take place at the same time (although Gentleman covers a much longer period of time) and while it's definitely interesting getting a feel for the changing (and the unchanging) political forces in the USSR, Gentleman seems like a dream compared to Cancer Ward's reality. 

In fact, while I appreciate the polite eliding over of the bad times, when Moscow was first under siege and then under conditions of extreme hardship throughout the rest of the war and after, and the horrible political and social ravages of Article 58, as not in keeping with the tone of the book, it is kind of a cop-out. As William Golding said in The Princess Bride: "What with one thing and another, five years passed." Skip the boring parts! Or in this case, the parts of extreme deprivation and hardship, fear, repression, and tyranny.  Is it fair to say that Towles needed to include these when telling a story about one man in one hotel? Maybe, maybe not.  After all, Jane Austen manages to avoid the Napoleonic Wars, and she wrote 6+ books set in that time period.

This book is practically cozy.  Rostov is the ultimate gentleman/hero: polite, mannered, cultured, deftly managing relationships with waiters, OGPU (KGB) officers, actresses, American spies, and children.  There are set-backs yes, (and it almost feels like Towles feels bad that his novel is not more depressing, as he puts a couple of "what happened to them after this" misfortunes of ancillary characters into footnotes) but ultimately, you feel good at the end - the right people succeed, the bad people are punished, and there is a bright and shining hope and optimism.

It feels odd to think of it this way, and it's definitely a spoiler, but it really belongs up there with some of the other great prison-break novels of our time: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Count of Monte Cristo (which I am so excited to read for the challenge later!).  This bears more resemblance to the Shawshank Redemption, in terms of the characters, motivations, lifestyles, and tone.  Rostov is not in for vengeance in the end.  Maybe because he knows how lucky he is to be merely imprisoned.  I never guessed it (I'm bad at mysteries) so one of the most poignant moments was when Rostov admitted to his dead friend's "widow" that the revolutionary poem that saved his life was written by his proletariat friend.  The subterfuge intended originally to save his friend from retribution ended up saving his own life.  Maybe it's saccharine, but maybe it's also important to have these moments in art, so that in life we can live up to the examples they lead.

40: Your Favorite Prompt From A Past Popsugar Reading Challenge
    (2017) 35: A Book Set In A Hotel

Cancer Ward

Cancer Ward

By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes. The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author's own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered.

Wooo, finally finished!  This one I knew would take a while, but that's what happens when you choose a Russian Great as the alternative to a romance with a fish-man.  Since the prompt was "book with a zodiac or astrology term in the title" I felt pretty much out of luck, since the only books I was coming up with astrology terms involved either "read the stars" guides, books about fucking various astrologically based men, and books that are, sadly, very out of print.  So when Cancer Ward popped up, I jumped on it.  Not only would a book by a Nobel winner hopefully give me impressive bonafides, but also, I was personally interested to read about the treatment of cancer in the Soviet Union forty years ago.  Little did I know that the entire book was more or less an allegory about the cancer of the Soviet Union.  It's a metaphor!!!!!!!

Despite all that, and despite my difficulty in remembering characters from one chapter to another, particularly when they'll be referred to either by two first names, or by a last name, and then also occasionally by a nickname, this was a relatively enjoyable read, despite not really having a plot. Basically, we enter the cancer ward with a hard-line party person (that's the Communist party, not, like, LMFAO) Rusanov, and we gradually get introduced the other residents of the ward and the doctors and nurses, get biographies and listen to conversations amongst the various characters.  We end up spending the most time with an exile, Kostoglotov, who winds up being "cured", has romances with both nurses, and, in the final chapter of the book, wanders around town before getting back on a train to the edge of nowhere.  

The overarching theme of the book (and you can tell it's by a really fancy author, because this book has themes and metaphors and probably other literary devices I was not paying attention to) is basically, a critique of the Soviet exile system and the ways in which the Russian people essentially became two halves of a dystopic whole: one half was sentenced to prison or exile for crimes built on wisps of air and gossip, the other half was commended and applauded for doing the sentencing.  There's a particularly relevant conversation between Kostoglotov and another patient in the ward where the other patient tells him that although he was exiled, at least he was permitted to tell the truth, keep his honor.  Rusanov, who embraced the idea of it, rose high in the party only to become paranoid when he hears that one of the people he denounced unjustly has been released.

This wasn't hard to read, exactly, it just requires you to pay attention.  Also it's a long book about a Soviet cancer ward, so the action is not exactly hoppin'.  But Solzhenitsyn is an artist - his descriptions and characters are excellent, and he draws you into their lives, making each of them a living being.

Because of the idea of cancer as metaphor there's somewhat less focus on the process itself, although Solzhenitsyn does not gloss over the daily procedures and treatments the patients undergo.  Instead though, we spend more time on the hospital's habit of releasing patients it can't cure, so as not to bring down their excellent statistics; of a nurse's glossing over of treatment options because it's easier to tell a patient what they'll be doing than to explain why this method is the best - particularly when the staff themselves aren't even sure. 

It's not really a pessimistic book (although after this one and the next one I found myself needing a definite change of pace) but it's a heavy book.  You do feel weighted down by all the burdens - mental, physical, emotional - these people are carrying.  The book's final chapter is Kostoglotov's walk through town, including a last minute decision to walk through the zoo (something another patient on the ward is literally almost dying to do) and he finds an empty cage for a monkey which died because a man threw pepper into its eyes.  We end the book on this image, I suppose because the act of senseless cruelty is meant to be akin to the cruelty imposed by Russians on their own citizens and neighbors. But in fact, the cancer has equalized them - party liner and exile alike suffer through the same indignities.  So in the end, the gulag system worked!  Haha, no, I don't think that's what we're supposed to take away from Cancer Ward.  But that's the danger with metaphors - if you take them as they lay, sometimes you wind up going backwards on your unicycle.  You see? Now this metaphor has gone too far.



33: A Book With A Zodiac Sign Or Astrology Term In The Title

The Winter of the Witch

The Winter of the Witch 

By Katherine Arden 

The Winternight Trilogy introduced an unforgettable heroine, Vasilisa Petrovna, a girl determined to forge her own path in a world that would rather lock her away. Her gifts and her courage have drawn the attention of Morozko, the winter-king, but it is too soon to know if this connection will prove a blessing or a curse.

Now Moscow has been struck by disaster. Its people are searching for answers—and for someone to blame. Vasya finds herself alone, beset on all sides. The Grand Prince is in a rage, choosing allies that will lead him on a path to war and ruin. A wicked demon returns, stronger than ever and determined to spread chaos. Caught at the center of the conflict is Vasya, who finds the fate of two worlds resting on her shoulders. Her destiny uncertain, Vasya will uncover surprising truths about herself and her history as she desperately tries to save Russia, Morozko, and the magical world she treasures. But she may not be able to save them all.

After two duds, I was very glad to get back to Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy.  This one was a bit of a freebie, since I had already read - and loved - the first two, I had a pretty good idea I would enjoy this one.  Although sometimes trilogies end in disappointment!  I'm reminded I still have the Tearling trilogy unfinished, because by the time the third came out, I realized I needed to re-read the second as a refresher, and, well, reviews were kinda negative, so I never bothered.  Invasion of the Tearling is still sitting out, waiting for me.  Oops.

Anyway, I have no such ill-news on The Winter of the Witch (which I keep calling the Season of the Witch, because that song is just a perfect earworm).  It's great!  Very boring, I know.  The reviews are a lot easier when you can just bitch for three pages.  Not to say that the book is boring, in fact, it starts off almost immediately with a tragedy, a beheading, and a frantic flight, that give it a feel that you're really jumping straight from the second book to the third without pause.  Literally, since the third is set immediately after the second.  Even after that though, it slows and picks up speed in ways that you don't expect.  There's a big climactic battle that you think would be the finale in another book, but you've got another whole narrative to finish.  [Sidebar: I don't think I reviewed this one here, but another great book that does this is The Library at Mount Char, which really gets you there, gets you wondering what else is there to do, and then pulls a whole other surprise out of its hat.  Another highly recommended read, but not for the faint of heart!]

Not to say that I loved everything about it - I thought the parts where she ends up romantically involved with Morozko were a distraction and unnecessary for her character.  She never seemed to need a romance, and I didn't really want one for her, even though there had been hints that way in earlier books.  Plus, since it has been awhile since I've read the first and second, the whole jewel storyline felt like it was very much built up in the first two books, both as a mystery and a plot point, but it seemed like it kind of fizzled into nothingness in the third.  I just feel like that was oddly unfinished, although maybe I just need to go back and re-read.

I can't help but compare this book to the Waking Lands books (unfairly perhaps) as how to write and plot well versus adequately. For example, in Waking Land, Elanna is beat up enough that she mentions pulling her shirt up and her ribs are black and blue.  Yet two pages later, she's riding a horse and jumping abruptly into the arms of her beloved whatshisname without even a passing thought to it.  In Winter of the Witch, Vasya gets the shit beat out of her, and she feels it for days, for weeks or months (time passes kind of weirdly for a while). It doesn't get forgotten in service of a cliche.

This trilogy as a whole is a wonderful deep dive into Russian folklore and feels like the best kind of fantasy: heavily and painstakingly plotted, not a thing out of place or out of character, and three books long.  Both the Winternight Trilogy and Naomi Novik's newest, Spinning Silver have rapidly replaced Orson Scott Card's Enchantment as my favorite psuedo-Russian fantasy (which definitely has some weird sexual issues that I enjoy less as I get older and wiser). 

This one I originally had down as my 2019 published book, but I'm switching this and Wicked King because I don't know what's in Wicked King but I feel like the domovoi creatures and the Firebird, for sure, better match the:

27: A book featuring an extinct or imaginary creature