This valiant effort to find hope in the face of crushing inevitability reminded me more of that grim old sourpuss Count Tolstoy.Īlexandra "Sasha" Samokhina is a 17-year-old straight-A student, preparing to apply to university.
They resist this predestination, even knowing that resistance is futile. Vita Nostra is an even darker story, with occasional flashes of humor surfacing in the dark waters of a story that seems to be dragging you along toward some unknown, unknowable fate, with characters who have few choices, who know they exist only to act out their predefined roles.
The Scar, with its themes of morality and consequences, punishment and redemption, reminded me of Dostoevsky. According to the afterword, it was translated by a Russian-born fan living in the U.S., which explains why the translation didn't read with the same professional smoothness as the Tor-published The Scar.
Sadly, there are was only one: Vita Nostra, the first book in their "Metamorphosis cycle." And it's only available on Amazon as an ebook. I liked The Scar so much that I sought out other novels by the Dyachenkos translated into English. I described Marina and Sergey Dyachenko's novel The Scar as "swords & sorcery if written by Fyodor Dostoevsky." I don't think I'm stretching the Russian-lit analogy too much to call this book "Harry Potter if written by Leo Tolstoy." It's strange and thoughtful and dark, full of psychological twists and turns, metaphysical tangents, and the desperately humorous shenanigans of young adults carrying on at a grim modern Russian boarding school that is turning them all into. This is a most unusual novel, especially for Western readers. The novel combines the seemingly incongruous aspects-spectacular adventures and philosophical depth, incredible transformations and psychological accuracy, complexity of ethical issues and mundane details of urban life. VITA NOSTRA is a thrilling journey into the deepest mysteries of existence, a dizzying adventure, an opening into a world that no one has ever described, a world that frightens and attracts the readers of the novel. Governed by fear and coercion, Sasha will learn the meaning of the phrase "In the beginning was the word. A slightest misstep or failure at school-and the students' loved ones pay a price. Against her will, she must enter the Institute of Special Technologies. The heroine of the novel has been forced into a seemingly inconceivable situation. The words VITA NOSTRA, or "our life," come from an old Latin student anthem Gaudeamus : "Vita nostra brevis est, Brevi finietur" or "Our life is brief, It will shortly end.
Amazon Digital Services, Inc., 2012, approximately 144,000 words (Originally published in Russian in 2007)
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