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    Vassa in the Night
    Vassa in the Night
    Vassa in the Night
    Audiobook10 hours

    Vassa in the Night

    Written by Sarah Porter

    Narrated by Madeleine Maby

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "A dark, thoroughly modern fairy tale crackling with wit and magical mayhem." -Leigh Bardugo, New York Times bestselling author of the Grisha Trilogy In the enchanted kingdom of Brooklyn, the fashionable people put on cute shoes, go to parties in warehouses, drink on rooftops at sunset, and tell themselves they've arrived. A whole lot of Brooklyn is like that now-but not Vassa's working-class neighborhood. In Vassa's neighborhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters-and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa's stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission. 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 a 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.... Inspired by the Russian folktale "Vassilissa the Beautiful" and Sarah Porter's years of experience teaching creative writing to New York City students, Vassa in the Night weaves a dark yet hopeful tale about a young girl's search for home, love, and belonging.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 11, 2016
    ISBN9781501948046
    Vassa in the Night
    Author

    Sarah Porter

    Sarah Porter is currently an academic visitor at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she is researching how universities can better adapt to their current and future challenges and to embrace the opportunities that are offered to them through new developments such as MOOCs.

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    Reviews for Vassa in the Night

    3.5/5

    97 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      An excellent retelling of Vasilisa the beautiful. I enjoyed the book and kept reading to find out more about Erg the doll. I learned we could all use an Erg in our lives.
    • 5/5
      I love strange books and this one was strange in the best way. Vassa and Erg are such great characters. I loved the magic and chaos in the book. Babs is a great villain. She is creepy and wicked. I highly recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      It is delightfully beautiful. An allegorical tale about our inner landscapes and the things we create to avoid pain. Highly recommend. And I loved the audio version!
    • 4/5
      Great! I really enjoyed this! I definitely wouldn't have picked it up on my own and am glad that it was recommended to me!
    • 4/5
      This is a contemporary retelling of Baba Yaga and Vasalisa the Beautiful (though I always heard it as Vasalisa the Brave, which I like much better) set in a Brooklyn where magic is real and pretty much taken for granted. It's set in an all-night convenience store that sells such things as lagoon-flavored toaster pastries and strawberry marshmallow fluff and which I would like to visit if a visit didn't also carry with it a 99.9% chance of decapitation. The story is dark and funny and darkly funny and Vassa herself is both brave and terrified, selfless and selfish, clever and not-so-much—just as all the best heroines are. The prose alternates between "High Fairy Tale" and contemporary snark, which perfectly suits the book itself. Like all fairy tales, too, the supporting cast are less fully fleshed than Vassa herself. (And Erg, with whom I occasionally got annoyed. But, given Erg's origins, both her dimensionality and annoying tendencies completely made sense in the end.) Babs Yagg is, of course, an archetype, so she never really becomes more than the Baba Yaga of folklore, which is fine. Dex and Sin are "hired hands", one of whom begins to grow a conscience and ends up sacrificed. (And, I'm a righty, but I noticed what felt like some prejudice against lefties. You are not evil, my left-handed friends, no matter what this story may imply.) Picnic and Pangolin, though, are probably my favorite characters. They feel as if they were created by Lewis Carroll, had their dialogue re-written by Neil Gaiman, and then decided to go off on an adventure in Porter's Brooklyn.

      And, sorry, this is totally disjointed, but I hope it at least gives you a sense of the feeling of this book, which is dreamy (or nightmare-y) and fantastical and fresh and contemporary and just all around wonder-full.
    • 5/5
      17-year-old Vassa and her tiny wooden (but also alive) doll find themselves working for a witchy and not-very-nice chain convenience store owner, whose shop dances on chicken legs and who exacts a very strict punishment for shoplifting.Oh gosh, this is So Good. Gaiman meets Miyazaki's Spirited Away with a nice dash of sass thrown in. I'll most definitely be reading more of Porter's stuff.
    • 4/5
      It amazed me and took my by surprise. It's one of the most unusual and original books I've ever read, which is a good thing. I love fairy tale retellings, but at this point it's rare to find one that's unusual and still really good.It took a while for me to get into the world and I kept wondering if I'd skipped over something important because I wasn't sure what was going on. After I did start to get into it, I was in it for good. It's fascinating and interesting and surreal and very well described (though perhaps not well introduced).I like Vassa a lot, but wanted to destroy Erg almost right away. Erg is still effective and I think well-written, but that doesn't mean I like her. All of the other characters are interesting and effective too. They all have very nice plotlines and growth, and I was very impressed with how almost all of them had suitable backstories and motivation without it coming across as unnecessary.Definitely recommend this for lovers of dark fairy tale retellings as well as anyone who is looking for an unusual, unique, and beautifully tragic fantasy novel.
    • 3/5
      perfectly serviceable if you've got a young person who you're trying to keep in fiction.It was sorta refreshing having a young woman coming-of-age thing without any specific romance, and in a largely all female world; otherwise, nothing special
    • 5/5
      Vassa in the Night begins with a folktale about Night that is instantly engaging and mysterious. Porter makes brilliant use of personification and imagery throughout the book. Vassa, the teenage heroine, is intelligent and snarky with great appeal. Vassa in the Night is whimsical, humorous, dark, lovely, fanciful and romantic. Everything a reader could want in a modern fairy tale. I hated to put it down and could easily have read it straight through. The story is filled with puzzling riddles and magical madness. Sometimes it is frightening and horrifying. Vassa in the Night is an excellent book for discussion and analysis. It also meets the Common Core Standards. I highly recommend this book for fans of revamped fairy tales and Young Adult novels.
    • 4/5
      So I finished this.and I'm still trying to figure out what I just read. The entire time I was reading Vassa in the Night It felt like I was in the middle of a strange nightmare. But you want to know something more bizarre? I actually liked it. Will be sharing more of my thoughts about this book as soon as my head clears.