Anna’s Reviews > Иди через темный лес > Status Update

Anna and Marya’s relationship changes after all of their trials, but they don’t immediately become super close as they used to be when they were kids. Too much happened between them, and it’s impossible to bring the past back, so there’s still distance – but they learned to understand each other better and began to support each other, and in doing so, they began to rebuild their relationship into something new.

Nothing passes without trail, and both Marya and Anna are changed by their journey, not just mentally, but physically as well. Marya, after being trapped in the ice crystal, is now always cold and can’t stand silence while Anna, due to almost being turned into a monster, inherited its enhanced healing and slight photophobia, as well as no dreams due to her deal with the ancient chthonic deity.

Yes, Wolf still doesn’t have much time left, since he had aged while in the spirit world, so he’s a young soul in the body of an old man, but at least he would have peace, for however long he has left to live. And the poor guy certainly deserved it.

I foretold a certain plot twist, but the reveal why Finist kidnapped Marya in the first place caught me by surprise. Turns out that Anna’s journey through the forest was a part of elaborate plan by Finist and he had both sisters exactly where he needed. And while Finist isn’t a villain bent on death and destruction, but rather a self-serving antagonist, his hostage-taking and blackmail is vile enough – and he wins.

Wolf’s plotline makes me cry. He’s pulled into the world of the dead because he refused his calling as a shaman, then he is constantly tortured by seeing all its nightmares without the glamour and by the inability to eat or drink there, then he is punished by crystals growing through his bones, then he learns that decades had passed in the living world and he can die in any moment. Give the poor guy a break!

Firebird is probably the only creature of the forest that doesn’t have any hidden agenda and doesn’t try to use Anna and Wolf in any way. She remains neutral to their plight, but she’s also compassionate and helpful; so many people had tried to take Firebird’s power for themselves, but she gladly shares it with Anna – she just had to be strong enough to find herself amid the darkness and to accept the flame.

When we met Marya in the beginning of the book, she was a prickly and bitter teen, but flashbacks show that it was not always the case. She and Anna used to be really close, but Anna pushed Marya away when she had reached out for her after their father’s death – ironically, Anna was so focused on working and providing for her sister that she never had time to actually be around when Marya needed attention.

I have a crazy theory that still makes sense. So, a) both the Hunter and Finist have blind milky eyes and not hindered by this disability; b) in fairy tales, Finist is capable of turning from falcon into man; c) shortly after Wolf shot Finist with an arrow, the Hunter reappeared looking wounded. What if the Hunter is actually Finist, and Anna had been looking for someone who kept regularly crossing her way?

Unlike her sisters, the Golden Queen never tries to kill Anna and even helps her, but it would be a mistake to label her as kind. She wields the power of the sun, but she’s not nice or merciful, rather like a force of nature, indifferent to anything that doesn’t directly influence her. In fact, she seriously creeps me out – like a mannequin that looks like a human but whose features are so fundamentally wrong.

I expected the Black Waters that scare even the undead inhabitants of the forest to be filled with monsters and dangers, but they are essentially the primordial ocean from which the world rose and into which it would decent, so there’s something even more terrifying: absolute nothingness. And the ancient deity that Anna meets is an epitome of chaotic neutral – it’s not evil and not kind, it’s bored.