I will not say much more except for quotes and real blockade pictures. As you may guess, this is the part with the blockade. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.'Chapter 23 of this book tore my heart to pieces. And yet the city - the Leningraders - never gave up.

People ate sawdust bread, rats, pets, and each other. Thousands of people froze and starved to death - several hundred per day in the winter of 1942. Leningrad was under siege by the Nazis from 1941 to 1943 - arguably the most lethal siege in history. The Great Patriotic War between Soviet Union and Germany. The war between mythical country of Buyan and Viy, the Tsar of Death.

There’s just no getting any of it back.' For me, this was, above anything, the story of war and loss. What if Koschei is the Tsar of Life? And what if he loves Marya and she loves him back? And what if there is a neverending tug of war in their tumultous marriage? And what if the story happens in Soviet Union in 1920s-1940s? And finally, most importantly, what if you, the reader, knew that at some point you would have to see Leningrad in 1942? 'No one is now what they were before the war. These stories have been told countless times. The evil Koschei the Deathless and Baba-Yaga, the kidnapped Marya Morevna (or Yelena, or Vasilisa), the brave Ivan who rescues her. I grew up with these characters - in so many folk tales, in so many movies. She has a Slavic soul, somehow otherwise how could she have written this book?! I name Catherynne Valente an honorary Slav.

Deathless by catherynne m valente