I received a copy of The Night-Bird’s Feather from netgalley in return for an honest review.

This book twists together heavy ideas of existence and other heady ideas with banter between characters that often have your head spinning. This is the sort of book that you isolate yourself in your room, maybe with some light simple music playing in the background, and no other chances of interruption. If you’re like me, then you should take copious breaks to walk around and just think about what you just read (which since my phone likes to crash my netgalley app and bring me back to the beginning of these long chapters and thus I had to sit down and read at least the entire chapter in one sitting).

In other words, read this when you want to delve into a book and really absorb it. If you try to read it quickly it will probably give you book indigestion. This would not be the book I suggest to get you out of a book slump.

That said, what is this book about? This book follows the life, and influence of the woman Valentina as she starts to explore her powers when her entire family is carved out and put to sleep by a heron witch who she then starts to connect with when the witch realizes she needs to help keep the family alive in order to continue to live in the families’ dreams. From that experience, she learns to resent the Headmaster of Bleak’s Academy, who turns out to be Death and who doesn’t want to see her anytime soon after that confrontation so she has a long life…

And from there the stories continue, some of them with her as the central character, and sometimes other people taking the stage with her as the sage woman (almost the witch character) that people seek to help with their problems. My favorite stories were the ones with the agoraphobic vampire. I thought that her second story brought up an interesting point, that I wasn’t sure was well explored, or was well explored but I lost in the banter and confusing prose, and the moving ending.

Overall, I really liked the story, or collections of stories about her life, her family, and her town, and I feel like I need to read it again to really get my head around some of the ideas. Which I don’t know if I missed it because of how it was written or my headache brain. I can say that at one point it made me really want to read some Terry Pratchett, especially some of his Death books or Tiffany Aching books, so it had that sort of feeling to it, but not quite that accessible if that makes sense.

It does have that fairytale feeling where characters decide to do something, or weird problems happen and they have easy ways to solve it (throw the man out of their house) but they feel they shouldn’t do that because it wouldn’t be polite so they go to Valentina or have to go through a set of strange tasks. They usually do this while talking philosophical and bantering at each other. So, it’s enjoyable, but do not read while watching the TV (as I’ve heard some crazy people do), or watching children, or doing anything but reading. At least that’s my advice. 😊

While I really wanted to love this story, the writing style just wasn't for me. It was hard to follow and stay engaged throughout the story. I often had to go back and reread passages in order to understand what the characters were talking about. The concept is unusual which is what drew me to the story, and while I think that it may be for some, it just wasn't meant for me,

Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read The Night-Bird’s Feather.

This book was so good. I was hooked from the start and loved how the book was written. I really enjoyed the characters and the plot. This story is unique but the writing style is what really sets it apart for me. I plan to read this again in the fall.

this was a beautifully done Slavic-inspired fantasy saga, I loved the strong imagery that was used in this book. Jenna Katerin Moran has a great writing style and it worked really well for a fantasy novel. The characters were beautifully done and they were what I expected from the story. I enjoyed the time-period used and loved the plot of the book. Overall I had a great time reading this and look forward to reading more from Jenna Katerin Moran.

"One day, the Headmaster of the Bleak Academy suddenly realized that he had a daughter. She was a creature of flesh and bone and hair, but also, a creature of fire. He turned to her. He said, “On this matter there is some division."