Where the Dark Stands Still (Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Edition)

by A. B. Poranek

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A Polish folklore reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, Where the Dark Stands Still is beautifully written and explores themes of trauma, repression and acceptance. This one will make you feel all the feels, from terror to heartbreak and everything in between.

This Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Edition features a special cover, and a new scene in which Liska is developing her magical abilities, seen through the eyes of the Leszy, as he realizes how deeply he is in love with her, his twin soul.

A girl with dangerous magic makes a risky bargain with a demon to be free of her monstrous power in this young adult fantasy perfect for fans of An Enchantment of Ravens and House of Salt and Sorrows.

Liska knows that magic is monstrous, and its practitioners are monsters. She has done everything possible to suppress her own magic, to disastrous consequences. Desperate to be free of it, Liska flees her small village and delves into the dangerous, demon-inhabited spirit-wood to steal a mythical fern flower. If she plucks it, she can use its one wish to banish her powers. Everyone who has sought the fern flower has fallen prey to unknown horrors, so when Liska is caught by the demon warden of the wood—called The Leszy—a bargain seems better than death: one year of servitude in exchange for the fern flower and its wish.

Whisked away to The Leszy’s crumbling manor, Liska soon makes an unsettling discovery: she is not the first person to strike this bargain, and all her predecessors have mysteriously vanished. If Liska wants to survive the year and return home, she must unravel her taciturn host’s spool of secrets and face the ghosts—figurative and literal—of his past. Because something wakes in the woods, something deadly and without mercy. It frightens even The Leszy...and cannot be defeated unless Liska embraces the monster she’s always feared becoming.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665965583
Publisher:	Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Edition description:	Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Edition
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,294
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

A. B. Poranek grew up in Canada but spent her summers in the Polish countryside, reading under apple trees and helping care for her grandfather’s chickens. Her love of animals led her to pursue a degree in veterinary medicine, though she never stopped writing along the way. Her first novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, is an ode to Poland’s wild woodlands, wilder folktales, and the girls who were raised by them.

Editorial Reviews

11/27/2023

Growing up in the fictional country of Orlica, where magic practitioners are seen as dangerous heretics, 17-year-old Liska Radost has spent her life desperately trying to suppress her powers. After a particularly disastrous magical outburst, Liska sets out for Driada, a perilous spirit-infested forest, to find a way to rid herself of magic. Liska soon encounters the Leszy, the monstrous warden of the wood who vows to grant her wish in exchange for a year’s servitude to him. Liska settles into her new life and begins forging a strange friendship with the Leszy’s crumbling manor, a talking cat-shaped spirit, and even her surly, enigmatic steward. As something even older and more dangerous than the Leszy stirs within Driada, Liska is forced to delve not only into the dark secrets surrounding her host, but also confront her own traumatic past in hopes of saving those she loves most. Interweaving harrowing scenes of demon hunting terror with quiet moments of domestic life simmering with romantic tension, Poranek employs lush prose to craft a Polish folklore and culture–influenced fantasy realm through which the debut author capably examines themes of trauma, repression, and the healing power of unconditional acceptance. Liska has olive skin and the Leszy is described as “ashen.” Ages 14–up. Agent: Victoria Marini, Irene Goodman Literary. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

2023-11-04
A village girl and a demon must battle an old god to save a magical wood in this reimagining of “Beauty and the Beast” that’s steeped in Polish folklore.

Seventeen-year-old Liska Radost, pale-skinned and periwinkle-eyed, seeks to quell rumors that she’s a witch and flees her village in search of the fern flower that can grant her desire to be rid of her magic. She ventures into the Driada, a supernatural forest that’s home to the antlered, shape-shifting Leszy, its warden. When the Leszy catches Liska attempting to pick the flamelike flower, he offers her a bargain: “serve me for a year, and when you are done, I will grant your wish.” Liska moves into the House Under the Rowan Tree, a charming, magical manor, and it’s not long before her relationship with the Leszy begins to change from servant to apprentice to something more. As Liska learns about magic and monsters, she uncovers secrets about the Leszy and discovers that there are creatures so terrifying that even a demon fears them. Poranek’s stunning worldbuilding immerses readers in a panoply of nightmares. Polish words are scattered throughout, sometimes without translation but easily comprehensible in context. The book is deliberately paced, focusing on the growth of both Liska and, mostly as a result of Liska’s actions, the Leszy, and patient readers will be rewarded with a well-written tearjerker featuring a fully fleshed-out magic system with pagan roots.

Dark, devastating, and gothic. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews