Vita Nostra | 
pickDark academia—but make it Eastern European! Welcome to the Institute of Special Technologies…Now enrolling fans of mysterious schools, linguistic magic systems, dark and ambitious speculative fiction, and over-achieving FMCs. This is one of the few English translations of Ukrainian sci-fi masters the Dyachenkos, championed by The Magicians‘ Lev Grossman. If brutal academies and arcane systems of magic speak to you, this is required reading!
Reggie! I cannot thank you enough! I wish I could start reading now but I know how I will be spending my Christmas evening. You are the best!
pickOne of the absolute best books I‘ve read this year! A surreal, dark, original, transcendental fantasy campus novel with world building that‘s just not like anything else I‘ve read. This is right up there with the secret history as the greatest ‘dark academia‘ kind of novel. I saw one review say it was like if Kafka wrote harry potter and that‘s absolutely true in the best possible way.
pickWell, I‘ve not been online enough for the more traditional #12booksof2022 - too many lovely other things going on with family! - & I couldn‘t narrow my faves down to 12 😅 but I do love a good list, so here‘s my favs in 2022.
Top 5:
1. Vita Nostra (here grouped w/ another great cerebral fantasy, Babel)
2. The Sentence
3. The Thursday Murder Club series
4. The Argonauts
5. A Memory Called Empire
(W/ Bunny + Our Wives Under the Sea close behind!)
Thanks @Larkken for my #auldlangspine list! Lovely to meet a new-to-me Litten and brilliant matching @monalyisha! Bunny I have read and loved, and the others are either exciting because I want to read them, or even more exciting because I've not heard of them! The tagged sounds brilliant - "Harry Potter if it was written by Kafka". Very happy, thank you!
pickSeptember was a pretty good reading month for me with two bingos on my #bookspinbingo board! I also finished the #bookspin pick, Jackpot for #aam, and a few chunksters including Babel! Favorite book of the month is tagged.
Next up! I'm really tired tonight so I'll probably wait until tomorrow to start this. I've heard this book is..... interesting. Fascinating premise. This will be my first foray into dark academia and I don't know if this is the best book to start with or not, but I'm just going to jump on in.
I did a newsletter for Book Riot not that long ago on Ukrainian historical fiction but I've also been looking into fiction and SFF from Ukrainian authors as well, so I thought I'd share a few I've found in case anyone else is interested and wants to put my research to good use.
Please feel free to share any other titles you know in the comments!
pickAmazing ride of a fantasy. First of a series but the only one translated into English. This was described as a grown ups Harry Potter. The end confused me so much I had to reread it several times. Anxiously waiting for the next in the series. 4.5 🌟 just fantasitic in all the meanings of that word.
pickWhat a mind-bender! I‘m not sure how to qualify this book — philosophical rumination, a fantasy, science fiction, a comfort-of-age story. It‘s all of these and more. Sasha‘s journey is filled with confusion, difficulties, and challenges, but also moments of clarity and joy that are palpable. The whole book reverberates with a sense of otherness that is somehow also intimately familiar. Reading it was a journey in and of itself, one I recommend.
Needed a good Kindle read as I‘m FINALLY getting a haircut today…but I‘ve been looking forward to this one.
pickThe structure of Vita Nostra is fairly simple. A young girl begins her training at an academy. She knows as much as we do, meaning not a lot. Teachers are cruel, but maybe with reason. Fellow students are antagonistic, but sometimes not. Not unique mode of storytelling but what stands out is the way our world has been distorted in this imagining. It‘s not my favorite type of story but it was dark and mysterious so it gets 4🤘🏼 out of 5
I‘ve been looking for more dark academia type reads... so looking forward to this!
I've been working my way through this fever dream of a book and I haveta say...its definitely unique.
This is a Russian to English translated dark academia story that is a complete mind bender. Very 'new weird fiction' and I think...I think I love it?
I'm roughly 70% through it now and it's mysteries and darkness have definitely won me over. 👍
pick4⭐ Just finished the tagged book. What a fascinating mind bender! I think the comparison to The Magicians is apt but it's also very much its own thing. I so enjoyed this gem!
pickIt's a huge novel of speculative fiction where magic is science, there's the re-defining of what it is to be, humanity as a construct, and a healthy dose of philosophy and literary allusions. Fans of Lev Grossman's The Magicians will love this, which makes sense as it was he who encouraged this to be translated from the Ukrainian into English. This is the first novel in the Метаморфозы series. Highly recommended!
so-soWhat WAS this?
It kept my interest, but after finishing I feel it was extremely repetitive and vague. Nothing is explained.
And is there a translated, published book 2?
No one seems to know. More obfuscation. Arrrgggh.
#7Days7Covers #covercrush
This one holds a spot of honor on my bookshelf (just means it faces out)
Thanks for the tags @JulietBooks @CareBear 😄
I I can‘t remember where I heard about this book, but I think it was a #blameitonlitsy
I didn‘t MEAN to abandon all my other current reads and start this . . . It just kinda happened.
And that cover!
#7days7covers
pickI have no idea what I just read.
I don't understand what happened.
I listened to the ending multiple times to see if I missed something.
But I loved it and I hope they translate the rest of the series!
so-soI enjoyed the world of this book, but the end feels a bit like the end of the Matrix Revolutions. And the characters bugged me. There was a lot of whiplash concerning how one character felt about another, and that was frustrating. We also got really granular and mundane details concerning the plot but never really got anything satisfying when it came to the over story or themes. It was a fascinating read, but I could have used a few more answers.
This has been my dog-walking accompaniment for the past few days. Definitely a whiskey-tango-foxtrot kind of vibe ... but in the best possible way!
Who put on their @bookriot TBR form that they were really sorry, but they hadn‘t read any of last three books they suggested last quarter, so they couldn‘t review them, but they were really excited about them.
🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️
This girl. Ready for my next round of TBR even though I haven‘t read the last one.
🤫🤫 This is the best subscription I pay for friends.
I‘m going to attempt #24B4Monday! I‘m over halfway through all of these, so I‘d like to finish them. Anything else I read will be from the #popjargame!
A friend of mine was sorting through her piles of galleys from the past few months and decided to send me a few!
This story is strange and I don't understand what's going on, but I really like it! I can't even explain why. Sheesh!
pickTranslated from Russian, this book was surreal and full of unique magic.
“Two weeks remained until the placement exam. If she was sorry about anything, it was about words that lingered unspoken. And especially sorry about the others, the ones that had flown off her tongue.”
pickWhaaaaaaaat? This was definitely a reading *experience* - reading this generated a lot of weird feelings and questions. I liked it, but I don't know who I would recommend it to. Comparing it to Harry Potter is WAY off base - as other reviewers mentioned, it's much more philosophical and metaphysical than HP. I liked the pace and that nothing came easily to the characters.
I think my wife wants to steal my copy of Vita Nostra. She keeps moving it to her side of the bed.
Cool kids in the back - a universal truth? Excited about this gritty urban fantasy
so-soThe Harry Potter and Magicians comparisons in on the dust jacket for Vita Nostra are all wrong. This book has very little in common with either of those series, though it ostensibly takes place in a school that teaches something like magic. This is a much, much stranger and more philosophical book. And darker. I felt rather misled by the marketing. This is more of a Kafkaesque metaphysical parable than a fantasy novel. And it was often boring.
pickI am loving this book so much I don‘t want to finish. I am seriously contemplating learning Russian so I can read the next books before the English translations come out.
pickThis is like Harry Potter written by Russian Slytherins. This is a deeply weird book, a blend of fantasy, metaphysics, philosophy, and science, it defies categorization. I don‘t know why everyone isn‘t talking about this book. You all need to read this book, and not just because I am desperate to discuss the ending!
pickRussian psychological fiction. Very trippy. Very Russian. I liked it ❤️ 4⭐️s
panI am not smart enough for this work of speculative fiction. I got more and more confused as it went along and by the end I was completely lost.
#bookhaul! Vita Nostra by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko, The New Class Conflict by Joel Kotkin, and Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown
I'm reading this thiiiiiick classic (this is my actual version) for my real life book group.... and I'm actually rather enjoying it! Hope I can read it all in time! (Employing some audio assistance 😁)
And Vita Nostra was at the top of my wishlist this year... my MiL ordered it for me for Christmas (when the local shop didn't have it), and I am interrupting all else to read it now. ☺️☺️☺️
How are your January reads shaping up?
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pickThings about this book where odd and I can‘t tell if that‘s because schools in the Ukraine are different or because THIS school, and it‘s students, and teachers are just odd. But it‘s an interesting read.
pickVita Nostra is frequently described as a Russian Harry Potter tale, but I‘m not sure the Institute of Special Technologies teaches magic. What Sasha learns and what she becomes is not explicitly told in the novel. It‘s an interesting book with a wonderful translation. So Russian in character and mood! It‘s highly readable and will likely make you ponder reality for some time after. 🐛🦋🐲
pickWhen a man in dark glasses approaches student Sasha Samokhina, it alters not only the course of her life, but the very world around her. Strange demands with fatal consequences, a mysterious university whose mad and maimed students must memorize pages of gibberish, and the secret of what it is the Institute of Special Technologies actually teaches...If arcane systems of magic speak to you, this is a must read, especially for fans of The Magicians.
pickWhat the hell did I just read?! Once I started this, I couldn't stop. At home, on the train, sneaking pages at work... So engrossing but I don't know how to explain it. A dark and philosophical Russian Harry Potter? That's what a lot of reviews seem to say but it had so little in common beyond "magic school," if what was going on can even be called simply "magic."
Very weird, very unique, sometimes a bit over my head. Loved it.
pickIt is delightfully weird and Russian. I hope that isn't stereotyping but I mean it in the most loving way. It is chock full of weirdness and terrifying beauty and ideas, some understandable and many not? I can't imagine how it was written and I can't imagine changing a thing. What a translation too, unbelievable.
Oh my goodness ... #bookmail from the gorgeous @LazyDays ! This was such a wonderful surprise. The postman knocked to hand them to me personally, he asked me if they were from my book buddies! I‘ve been waiting for Vita Nostra to come out - Russian fantasy with magic, books & philosophy! And The Blue Salt Road is beautiful... more pictures to come! #bookfriendsrock 🙏❤️🙏❤️🙏
I rejoined #justtherightbook since #botm has been such a disappointment this year. #JTRB always sent me a book I really enjoyed 😍 When the first book was one I had already read, they immediately sent a return postage and new book. Here‘s the revised selection that I am so excited to read!! 🧙🏼♀️
