Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko & Sergey Dyachenko book review

 

Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko & Sergey Dyachenko book review

Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko & Sergey Dyachenko this was a book that was originally published in Ukrainian and has recently been translated into English.

It's a first book in a series, and I am very much hoping that they continue translating these books because I really enjoyed it. So this is a fantasy story and you are following this character named Sasha. 

She is around sixteen, seventeen years old when the story starts. Her and her mother have gone off on like a beach vacation. And while she's there she keeps like noticing the strange man around. Like she'll see him around town and see him always sort of like nearby where they are. 

Sometimes he's like looking directly at her, things like that. And so she just thinks he's like kind of a creep and tries to avoid him as much as possible. 

But then they end up talking to each other and he tells her that he has a task for her and that is to every morning at like 4:00 a.m. or so to wake up, go to the beach, take off all her clothes, swim to the buoy, and then swim back. And then she can put on also her clothes and return home. 

Sasha is obviously very confused by this task but she's also kind of intrigued by it. And so she ends up doing it and then when she's like walking home she ends up throwing up gold coins. 

So then after she does that task for the first time, he approaches her and tells her to keep the gold coins and then to continue doing that task every single day until she can't do it anymore, or until he tells her to stop doing it. 

But then you know summer ends and they return home. She's told that she can stop. When she returns home she gets another task and eventually she's told to collect all the gold coins that she has gotten from doing these tasks. 

She has gotten acceptance to a very special, specific university. It's called the Institute of special technology and it's located in this like super tiny town that's like barely even on a map. No one's ever heard of it before. 

Her mom is slightly concerned because she had like big plans for her to go to like a major university. She was always a good student and things like that. Sort of losing focus on that and going off to this tiny university and no one's after heard of before, obviously like her mom's concerned. 

But she tells her that like you know she'll just go there for like a couple of years and then transfer into a better school. And so obviously this university is not really like any other university. 

They are given like very specific tasks and very specific classes that don't really make a lot of sense. When they don't complete the tasks that they are given or don't complete like their homework assignments or pass their tests very well or anything like that, something terrible happens to their family. 

So this story is basically following Sasha as well as the other students that are at this university as they are going through this process. And Sasha, as well as you as the reader, are trying to figure out what exactly is going on here. 

So I really enjoyed this book a lot. I described this book on Goodreads as being like Harry Potter but if Harry Potter was written by Kafka. 

This is also another one of those books where when I was reading it, I kept thinking about how everyone called The Magicians by Lev Grossman like the adult Harry Potter and that wasn't really that accurate. And I feel like this is a book that is closer to being an "adult Harry Potter" than The Magicians was. 

So I feel like if you or someone who read The Magicians because you got that pitch and you were disappointed by it, I feel like this might be a good one to check out. This book is like super heady. 

It's very like philosophical in nature and very much focuses on things that are sort of like beyond this world. And so there's a lot of things that I will admit that I've read in this book where I was like, "I don't, I don't really understand what they're saying. 

But I'm just sort of like along for the ride." I think that if you are someone who likes boarding school stories or you like magical school stories, this would be really interesting to read. This one is very much an adult book. Like violent things happen in this book, there's discussions about like and things like that. 

It's very much like a dark fantasy story and it has like a very unique style of writing. Like like major props to Julia Hersey who translated this book because the writing in here is so wonderful.

This is a very slow-moving fantasy, which is the thing that I personally really enjoy. But I know like that everyone enjoys those types of books. So just be forewarned for that. 

But it's one of those books where it felt like the language really envelops you and you really do fall into this world quite a bit.

It's one of those books where like I was reading it during my lunch break and it felt like it was putting me in a trance almost when I was reading the book, which is like such a wonderful thing to experience. 

This is also a very, you know, "adult fantasy magical school" type of book. I put air quotes around that because, you know, semantics. 

But I feel like it falls into that category a lot more because Sasha herself is a very, I don't want to say unlikable because I actually like Sasha a lot. But she comes off as very like brass and very aggressive. 

She can be very off-putting to people and she's very off-putting to like the other characters in the book as well. So it's not like the author is writing her this way and pretending like everyone also really loves her. 

Like she's also not liked by a lot of people in her book world too. But I actually like the complexities of her as a character and her struggling to both follow these rules and these tasks, but also questioning everything that's happening around her. 

There's something about the way that this book is written that really gets how it feels to study and learn and try to figure out something really, really complicated and really, really complex and something that is sort of like beyond your understanding. 

I feel like anyone who's sort of done any sort of higher education where you dealt with really complicated topics or just anything that you've tried to study that like you really couldn't get it and it didn't really make sense and then there's sort of like this moment where things click. 

The book describes that experience really, really well. It's actually funny because I've been-- I read that this book in January and like I just started a new job that has been literally like a very steep learning curve. 

And there were moments where I was reading this book where I was like, yeah, I really get this right now. Because like I was learning so much and it felt like nothing was clicking but now I'm at the point where like some things are starting to stick and some things are starting to make sense and like that sort of turn and understanding is something that again is just described really, really well in this book. So yeah, this is a book, again, I really enjoyed this a lot.

This is not a book that answers every single question. This is again the first book in a series. And so it's a slower paced story and a lot of this is basically like creating the world and setting up certain things that you can tell are going to play out in the future. 

This book doesn't necessarily end on a cliffhanger but the ending is basically like the beginning of the next part. So just kind of be aware of that if you are someone who gets really upset at cliff hangers. Like it's not a cliffhanger ending but it's also basically like Sasha finishing this section of her life and about to start the next section of her life. 

So yeah, I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars. Really enjoyed this a lot, very excited for more books in this series because this is one of those books that I feel like really encapsulate magical schools for adults really well. 

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