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The Secret History of Moscow

3.43 of 5 stars 3.43 · rating details · 675 ratings · 151 reviews

Every city contains secret places. Moscow in the tumultuous 1990s is no different, its citizens seeking safety in a world below the streets - a dark, cavernous world of magic, weeping trees, and albino jackdaws, where exiled pagan deities and faerytale creatures whisper strange tales to those who would listen. Galina is a young woman caught, like her contemporaries, in the...more

Paperback, 303 pages

Published November 20th 2007 by Prime Books (first published November 1st 2007)

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Jun 24, 2011 Mariel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: butcher birds

Recommended to Mariel by: Mariel the horrible

I really want to talk about crack babies to talk about how I feel about this book. That's what I'm thinking about. "Mariel, they are born into a disrupted world and missing a chemical/spiritual/whatever balance..." and then I think crack babies 'cause my attention span is shot and I'm a half thought kinda person on good days.

I'd take a picture of my mind map and the connect the dots if I could. (They show a picture of a dog's head when joined! Because that's what my mind thinks of when it think...more

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Mar 31, 2009 Small Creek rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

The Secret History of Moscow reads like a fusion of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and American Gods, only set in Moscow and populated by Slavic deities.

On the one hand I can't say that I'm much enamoured by any of our protagonists, which is not to say that they are not good characters. They are, in fact, rather well-written individuals with layers of personality and lots of spirit--I just happen not to like any of them. As always, I've fallen for the minor league players. It's doubly more fascinating...more

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May 22, 2012 Colleen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: dark-fantasy

2.5

When I saw the reviews for this book I saw it discussed as a mixture of Neverwhere and American Gods - two books I love from Neil Gaiman. And while the comparison is a fair one when it comes to the premise of the story, it doesn't really live up to the comparison in execution.

I wanted to love this book. It's right up my alley, and it's a book that I should've loved, but while it was interesting, it just sort of fell flat. I think mostly it's because the characters never seemed really develope...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Morgan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantastical, russian

I really wanted to like this, but I just couldn't do it. The concept sounded fascinating--people turning into jackdaws, a hidden mythological underground, Russian folklore--but it was such a pain to read. Galina was obnoxious, and there wasn't enough to the other characters to give them anything. And she can't write dialogue. This was probably some of the worst dialogue I've read in a while. The prose and the descriptions of what people felt was okay, but the dialogue and even action sequences w...more

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Feb 01, 2008 Seth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

The Secret History of Moscow
Ekaterina Sedia
Prime Books

Kat Sedia's "new" book, (it came out sometime in 2007, but my reading schedule is slow as molasses) The Secret History of Moscow, is an intriguing novel about set in both the normal world of Moscow in the 1990s and in the strange underworld beneath it where both mythical figures from Moscow's past rub shoulders with Muscovites and visitors from many eras. When Maria, the sister of the main character Galina mysteriously turns into a jackdaw an...more The Secret History of Moscow
Ekaterina Sedia
Prime Books

Kat Sedia's "new" book, (it came out sometime in 2007, but my reading schedule is slow as molasses) The Secret History of Moscow, is an intriguing novel about set in both the normal world of Moscow in the 1990s and in the strange underworld beneath it where both mythical figures from Moscow's past rub shoulders with Muscovites and visitors from many eras. When Maria, the sister of the main character Galina mysteriously turns into a jackdaw and flies away, Galina is compelled to seek out the hidden world beneath and around her.

Superficially, this novel is very similar to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, as Gaiman in his usual modest way suggests in a review of his own. Sedia I think builds on Gaiman's ideas of a mythical world mirroring (and underneath) our modern one - populating her 'mythic' Moscow with historical figures - gypsies, Jews from the pogroms, Napoleanic soldiers and Tajik warriors; and strange and curious creatures from stories like the voidyanoi, rusalki, and Koschei the Deathless.

The three main characters Galina, a woman who works as an English translator, Yakov the cop, and Fyodor the itinerant artist, are normal people who become aware of the strangeness that's disrupted their lives: They've seen things - people turning into blackbirds before their eyes or watched family members vanish, and are the only ones compelled to get to the bottom of what's going on. It took me a few chapters of character introduction to get into the book, but once things were set up I could barely put the book down. I didn't just want to know what happened next, I was sucked into the narrative. I almost didn't want it to end and was cursing the book was only 300 pages.

Sedia cuts out nearly everything for a breezy writing style that is fast-paced and extremely easy to read, only to come to jarring stops when she pauses to flesh out a character met along the way with their own story. This, it turns out, is an extremely good thing. Sedia's strengths at least in this story is creating incredibly engaging and interesting characters in a short amount of time. And with each of those characters, one gets a sense of the inevitable change of history around them.

As much as people in reviews I've seen have focused on the Russian-ness or Moscow-ness of the story, I don't actually see that as a strong point of the book. For all the fascinating observations of the changes of Russian style (from the crown Peter the Great refused to wear, to traffic snarls and the motives of car ownership in modern Moscow) one doesn't actually get a sense of Moscow as a character. Part, I think, is that descriptions throughout the book are notoriously spare. I never got a sense of the personality of the setting around me, or its character.

But what I did get from this book was a real sense of the struggle of otherwise normal people in events wildly beyond their control. And, in character after character, outsiders forced to view the normal events of a city from a distant, almost solitary perspective. This I think is much more universal - I'd even go so far as to say it's a primary focus of modern fantasy, and what sets apart bad fantasy which only offers an escape for those who feel outside modern culture, and good fantasy which offers empathy and understanding, and uses tools of mythology towards those ends. It's something Gaiman has always been uniquely good at and is a reason why his writing is so popular. Sedia's Secret History builds on this, and more.

I want to shout from the rooftops about this novel. It's just that great. More people need to be reading and talking about this book.(less)

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Mar 21, 2008 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Sean by: Laura Llew

Shelves: fantasy, non-us

It is the early nineties in Moscow, and reality seems to be thinning and winding down along with communism. People are disappearing, transformed into birds before the eyes of their loved ones; strange passages to another world are opening around the city, glimpsed in reflections and dark buildings; and legends seem to be coming to life. Three people are drawn through one of these passages: Galina, whose sister gave birth and then turned into a jackdaw; Yakov, a policeman who wants to believe onl...more

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Feb 06, 2008 Meredith rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The idea of an underground world populated by fantastic and folklorish creatures has been done before to great success (Neverwhere by Gaiman comes to mind, among many others), but I didn't find too much that was particularly distinctive or engaging about Sedia's prose. This is set in Moscow in the 1990's, and the goings-on in the book are very tied to Russia's atmosphere of the time. That was very interesting to me, along with the various Russia...more

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Jan 05, 2009 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book and can't wait to get started on Alchemy of Stone.

I think what stuck with me most was the characters' love of "Moscow of the past." The old homes and buildings that made up the city center where only the privileged few lived. The transition from "Past Moscow" to the concrete and utilitarian "Soviet Moscow" was apparent in the characters' memories of their childhoods and how as we move to adulthood we are somehow robbed of our childhood beliefs and ideas. Finally to a "...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Miriam Williams rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy, fantasy, mythology, russian

A great book.

The underlying plot is driven by magic. People are being turned into birds, and two people - a girl who wants to save her now-avian sister, and a policeman assigned to the missing person's case - are on a quest to get them back. Their investigation leads underground, to a Moscow populated by outcasts beyond time - some former political dissidents; others, simple misfits who fell through the cracks. It's a powerful setting, made all the more real by the fact that underground, undeve...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Nesa Sivagnanam rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is what going mad feels like.

Imagine: Your heavily pregnant sister vanishes from the bathroom one evening. A locked bathroom, in the eighth story apartment you share with your mother. Leaving her baby behind, apparently having paused to birth it. And there is something familiar about the look in that white jackdaw's eye. The jackdaw might just be your sister.

Galina, the young Russian woman to whom all this happens knows a thing or two about madness, and sanity:

"Galina remembered that day, w...more

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Oct 16, 2011 Amber rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've always been fascinated by the link between a culture and their folklore, and that's exactly what this book deals with. Ms. Sedia has a particular flavor of magical realism that I really love. Her dealings with the characters from folklore and the interaction between those characters and Russian people - ordinary people - feels like a window into the Russian soul. While there are still plenty of things I don't fully understand about what it is to be Russian, I think I got a good sense of it...more

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May 17, 2011 Eva Folsom rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book up off of the freebie table at FOGcon. When I decided to sit down to read it, I was really pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing. Sedia's imagery can be just stunning and very emotionally evocative. I also loved the character sketches and development she does in the beginning of the book, introducing an adult character, showing them at formative moments in childhood, then bringing us back to the present adult.

For me, though, the book seriously sagged in the middl...more

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Mar 10, 2011 sabisteb rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: buch, fantasy

Galina lebt in der grauen moskauer Vorstadt. Sie ist die ungeliebte ältere Schwester einer wunderbaren, schönen und schwangeren jüngeren Schwester. Regelmäßig wirft ihr ihre Mutter vor, dass sie noch keinen Mann hat "Aber ich sag lieber zu früh als zu spät, sag ich, und die kennst doch Galina, die alte Jungfer; ich habe meine Zweifel, dass aus der noch Enkelkinder kommen, und ich muss ganz ehrlich sagen, wenn das so weitergeht, dann dauert es nicht mehr lange, und ich wünsche mir, dass sie einfa...more Galina lebt in der grauen moskauer Vorstadt. Sie ist die ungeliebte ältere Schwester einer wunderbaren, schönen und schwangeren jüngeren Schwester. Regelmäßig wirft ihr ihre Mutter vor, dass sie noch keinen Mann hat "Aber ich sag lieber zu früh als zu spät, sag ich, und die kennst doch Galina, die alte Jungfer; ich habe meine Zweifel, dass aus der noch Enkelkinder kommen, und ich muss ganz ehrlich sagen, wenn das so weitergeht, dann dauert es nicht mehr lange, und ich wünsche mir, dass sie einfach was Uneheliches kriegt, [...]."
Aber noch etwas anderes als die 10 Jahre Altersunterschied zu ihrer Schwester unterscheiden die beiden: Galina sieht eine andere Welt. Eine unheimliche Welt parallel zum heutigen Moskau in welcher sich Menschen in Vögel verwandeln. Nachdem Galina jedoch wegen ihrer Visionen bereits in der Psychiatrie war, traut sie sich nicht, sich jemandem anzuvertrauen, bis sich ihre Schwester eines Tages in eine Dole verwandelt.
In Jakov dem Polizisten, welcher das Verschwinden der Menschen untersucht und Fjodor, dem obdachlosen, alkoholabhängigen Maler und der Zigeunerin Oksana findet Galina Verbündete auf der Suche nach ihrer Schwester. Fjodor führt sie in das geheimnisvolle unterirdische Moskau, welches man durch spiegelnde Oberflächen, wie Pfützen oder U-Bahn Fenster, betreten kann. In dieser unterirdischen Parallelwelt haben die Märchen und Sachengestalten des alten Russland ihre Zuflucht vor dem Christentum gefunden und führen ein von der Zeit und Realität losgelöstes Leben. Eine Märchengestallt jedoch spielt falsch und verkauft das Wissen an die Magie an die russische Maffia, die die Seelen ihrer Gegner in Glaskugeln einschließt.
Das Buch ist voller subtilem Humor, so erklärt Fjodor sein Obdachlosendasein mit der Thermodynamik "Obwohl er noch jung war, hatte er gelernt, dass es nie besser, sondern immer schlimmer wurde, dass die Entropie gewann, dass das Universum, obwohl es geordnet wirkte, nur eine Richtung hatte, nämlich den Hitzetod, so viel besagte der zweite Hauptsatz der Thermodynamik, und wer war er, dass er sich mit Herrn von Helmholtz anlegen durfte? Alles strebte nach seinem niedrigsten Energiestatus, und Fjodor hatte seinen gefunden" (S. 51).
Für Westeuropäer ist dieses Buch befremdlich zu lesen. Einerseits beschreibt es die desolate Situation im heutigen Russland. Moskau ist keine so schöne, saubere Hochglanzmetropole, wie man es aus angelsächsischen Fantasyromanen gewöhnt ist. In dieser Hinsicht enthält dieses Buch eine gehörige Portion Sozialkritik.
Andererseits spielt die Autorin mit mythischen Elementen der europäischen Literatur, wie dem Zauberer von Oz oder Alice im Spiegelland gepaart mit russischen Märchen- und Sagengestalten, die den meisten Westeuropäern fremd sind. Eine Spannende Mischung, die den Bogen zwischen westlicher und östlicher Mythologie schlägt, gepaart mit einer gehörigen Priese russischer Melancholie.
Fremd, ungewöhnlich und überraschend.(less)

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Jan 23, 2011 Alan rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Rusalki i kulturnyh

Recommended to Alan by: Subsequent work

"You know how they say the grass is always greener on the other side? It is greener, because you're not there. And if you go you'll trample it and leave dirty footprints and probably spill something poisonous."
—p.112

Some people make the mistake of thinking that magic is stronger than science, older and more powerful, but we city-dwellers know that magic is a fragile thing, easily driven away or trampled underfoot by unthinking humanity. When magic is attacked, it retreats, into the high places, into faraway fastnesses, and... underground, where it tries to eke out an uneasy coexistence with the mundane world above.

All the magic of Moscow—its minor gods and colorful doomed soldiery, its rusalki (mermaids) and vodyanoy (water spirits, which I had not realized were a part of Slavic folklore; I had thought that China Miéville invented 'em)—has been retreating in this way for centuries. The pace has ebbed and flowed with the fortunes of the Czars, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, glasnost, the post-Soviet Russian Federation... but always the magic has gone deeper, deeper underground, deeper even than the Metro tunnels evoked so strongly here (also called forth by Alexander Kaletski's excellent semi-autobiographical novel Metro: A Novel of the Moscow Underground, which displays much the same lyrical appreciation for the Moscow subway system).

Naturally, there is a quest, or several quests; an unlikely and happenstance band of surface dwellers ducks through a portal into the underworld of Moscow, into its secret history, in search of an explanation for the number of people disappearing from aboveground—are they truly being transformed into birds, as the diagnosed schizophrenic Galina believes happened to her sister Masha? Or is there something else at work?

I was not as immediately engaged by The Secret History of Moscow as I was by Sedia's subsequent novel, The Alchemy of Stone, but I did end up liking this one a lot. There are the occasional hints that the author is not a native English-speaker—dropped articles, odd prepositional choices—but those are infrequent enough that they only add to the charm. Ekaterina Sedia knows about mystery and magic, and about Moscow, as this subtle and melancholy fantasy shows.(less)

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Dec 03, 2010 Lydia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have never had a very positive picture of life in Russia. From Doestoevsky and Anton Chekov, as well as from various history classes, I have a view of a bleak, cold country with high rates of depression and unlovely cities. Also, I have the idea that it is still struggling to recover from the effects of communism and if I were to paint a picture it would be grey and brown and white. That being said, Crime and Punishment is one of my favorite books. So I was not expecting to enjoy The Secret Hi...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Jaime Nelson rated it 3 of 5 stars

What’s it about?

Everyone says Galina is schizophrenic because of the things she sees. She can’t get a boyfriend. She can’t save enough money to move out of the house. Even her own mother doesn’t like her. But when her pregnant younger sister Masha turns into a jackdaw (a crow), leaving her baby on the bathroom floor, umbilical cord still attached, Galina knows that whatever’s wrong with the world is not all in her head.

Police detective Yakov is inspecting cases of disappearing persons all over M...more

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May 17, 2012 Kevin added it · review of another edition

Recommended to Kevin by: Kim

Shelves: abandoned

Nope, had to abandon it - 80-something pages in and no spark for me whatsoever. I think Sedia needs an editor, or one that's more attentive than whoever worked on this one. Everything was jammed together with no purpose, no pacing. The perfunctory and joyless introduction of the three protagonists felt rushed, as if she thought she had to get all of their back stories out at the very beginning. "Here is Person A and her entire history up to now. Here is Person B and his entire history up to now....more Nope, had to abandon it - 80-something pages in and no spark for me whatsoever. I think Sedia needs an editor, or one that's more attentive than whoever worked on this one. Everything was jammed together with no purpose, no pacing. The perfunctory and joyless introduction of the three protagonists felt rushed, as if she thought she had to get all of their back stories out at the very beginning. "Here is Person A and her entire history up to now. Here is Person B and his entire history up to now. Here is Person C and his entire history up to now. Okay, here's how I am going to throw them together on an adventure." It didn't work for me at all; I would much rather have had their stories and personalities come out bit by bit as the novel progressed.

Same thing for certain points like one character thinking to herself "I used to feel that the subways held a secret. I was never strong enough to stick around and find out what it was" and then literally one page later another character says, "I know the way in - it's through the subway tunnels." This kind of "oh my god we've all had the same crazy ideas and they're binding us into a group" kind of plot point needs a little space to grow, otherwise it feels very write-by-the-numbers-as-fast-as-possible.

As for the fantasy world setting, I felt that Sedia had it all clearly in her mind and then forgot that her characters (who start in the real world) were unfamiliar with it and would need to react to it. The three protagonists are pulled from a subway in Moscow down into some alternate realm, and not a one of them seems to exclaim anything, express shock, look for a way out, or even question what just happened. Considering one of the characters is a police officer you'd think at least he would have reacted in some fashion.

Likewise when they encounter a pub in this new underground realm and they're told that the person / god that they're looking for drops by sometimes, no one bats an eyelash. A few pages later one of the protagonists even says, "Oh, I just want to sit here and watch the gods and people come and go." I'm sure Sedia had in mind that multiple gods would come and go, but how does that character know? How can they all be so blase about their experience?

FInally, the writing itself needed work. Example: "the white arch cupping above them and a dim road stretching in every direction." It's not a huge error but it stands out nonetheless. Repetitive description was a problem as well: a paragraph later the same road was referenced: "the road they stood on stretched before them." Apparently this road goes everywhere and it stretches the entire time it does it. Got it.

I see a lot of other reviewers referencing a great fantasy story; I just couldn't get through the writing to find it.
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Dec 04, 2011 Arun Divakar rated it 3 of 5 stars

The name is quite an enigmatic one don't you think ? The secret history of Moscow makes you think of mythology & strange creatures, the backdrop of the Onion shaped domes of the Kremlin providing an ambience that few can match and so forth. What I have described above is true in parts when applied to this story but as a whole it is unsatisfying a dish !

At one glance it is a good mix of Gaiman's American Gods & Neverwhere . There is a world beneath our dwellings and populated by the ic...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Ben Babcock rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-read, fantasy, mystery, mythology-remix, not-my-cup-of-tea, own

I don’t know a lot about Moscow, or even Russia in general. If I had more free time, I would devote some of it to feeling guilty for this gap in my knowledge. Some day I might even get around to rectifying it by reading some informative books on the subject, rather than fantasy (which, I’m given to understand, is not always 100% factual—odd, that). But not today! No, today I’ll talk about The Secret History of Moscow, in all its dark and magical glory.

Ekaterina Sedia writes fairy tales. The Alc...more I don’t know a lot about Moscow, or even Russia in general. If I had more free time, I would devote some of it to feeling guilty for this gap in my knowledge. Some day I might even get around to rectifying it by reading some informative books on the subject, rather than fantasy (which, I’m given to understand, is not always 100% factual—odd, that). But not today! No, today I’ll talk about The Secret History of Moscow, in all its dark and magical glory.

Ekaterina Sedia writes fairy tales. The Alchemy of Stone is a fairy tale about a clockwork woman who wants to be a real girl. The Secret History of Moscow is a fairy tale about a woman who, out of place and out of touch with our own world, uncovers a secret one while searching for her sister. When Masha turns into a jackdaw after giving birth in their bathroom, Galina wants to know why. Along the way, she meets a cop who has been investigating similar disappearances. They, in turn, meet a street artist who leads them into another world—underground—where the detritus of Moscow’s past has slunk.

I’m not sure what to do with The Secret History of Moscow. I’m not sure what to say about it, or really how I feel about it. It was OK. Sedia kept me interested, kept me wanting to know how it would all turn out. But now that I’m finished it, I discover that it has left almost no impression with me. That makes it difficult to review.

Wherefrom this malaise? I blame the structure of the narrative, the way Sedia chooses to tell this story. Galina, Yakov, and Fyodor waste no time discovering the underground, a twisted sort of fairyland where gods go to wither and die…. And then they stay there. For a while. They sort of loaf around an ersatz inn, chatting with Yakov’s grandfather and learning a little about the locals. Is it interesting? I guess. But it’s a lull, one that belies the otherwise urgent beat of the plot drum. There are people missing, birds flying through reflections in puddles to other worlds … I wanted to jump up and yell, “You have to get a move on!” I wasn’t reminded of it while reading, but as I write this review, I’m spurred to compare this to Bridge of Birds . I’m not sure why—perhaps the fairy-tale qualities of both tales—but the latter definitely has more pulse-pounding action even as it fully embraces whimsy and wonder.

The Secret History of Moscow, on the other hand, sort of plods along. The characters are cool, even sympathetic. The deposed and dispossessed mythological figures are also fascinating. Sedia draws from a diverse range of backgrounds, creating a kind of mythological mosaic, a sampling of ideas from the various cultures and times that have called Russia home. I wish she did them all justice, but the book is so short that we get only the slightest glimpse into these characters and what they represent.

Galina’s choice, at the end, was a good way to end the book too. It makes sense, given what we know of her—but at the same time, I wish we had spent more time with her in Moscow, seen more of her life. Does she have any friends? No one who will really miss her? Was her life really that one-note? Sedia writes well, but if she were an artist she would own only one, really wide paintbrush, and paint in bold and sweeping strokes across a smoky, ashen canvas.

I liked the book, but I don’t feel enthusiastic about it. It’s competent but not compelling. I don’t mind tossing my recommendation in there, if you think this is your thing, because there is nothing outright poor about The Secret History of Moscow. But it didn’t excite me either.

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Jul 22, 2011 Emil Söderman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, female-author, mythology

If there's one word I would use to describe this book it's "Gaimanesque". (And the fact that this word exists amuses me greatly) It reads a bit like a russian American Gods crossed with Neverwhere, although far less glamorous than either of those. It is the story of how about of broken-down russians gets involved in a supernatural conspiracy and end the story just as broken as when they began it.

The story draws heavily on russian history (of which I caught most of it) and fairy tales (which I pr...more If there's one word I would use to describe this book it's "Gaimanesque". (And the fact that this word exists amuses me greatly) It reads a bit like a russian American Gods crossed with Neverwhere, although far less glamorous than either of those. It is the story of how about of broken-down russians gets involved in a supernatural conspiracy and end the story just as broken as when they began it.

The story draws heavily on russian history (of which I caught most of it) and fairy tales (which I probably missed most of, despite my voracious reading of all sorts of fairy-tales as a kid) and most of the concepts are, superficially, something that's been done before: The "hidden" space where old fairytales/gods go hide from modern society, the breaching of this magical world by modern elements, etc. etc. It's all pretty standard urban fantasy tropes.

What makes this book different is the tone, not the plot. It's bleak, and what's more, bleak in a kind of unromantic way, just the average, grinding bleakness of people who've already lost most of their hope losing a bit more. Even the magical refuge comes across as a depressing broken-down refuge for the unwanted rather than some magical fairytale kingdom. Heck, even the magical conspiracy is banal: Involving not some grand scheme to take over the world, become a god, or anything, but it's a common, almost banal scheme by an unremarkable individual.

It's very refreshing. There's no greater meaning in the suffering these people go through (and inflict on each other), their good deeds are small and their evil deeds are petty. The lack of grandeur makes it feel far more real and intimate than most other stories of it's ilk, even though the characters (disillusioned cop, woman who spent time at a mental institution, drunk...) feel without much depth.

I do give props to one thing though, in most, if not all, books if the female main character starts out the book by mentioning her lack of success with men, you'd expect her to find love at some point in the narrative. Not so in this book, or at least, not that kind of love. (less)

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Apr 24, 2010 Paul Eckert rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Secret History of Moscow was like a cross between Neil Gaiman's American Gods and The Inferno.

The premise: Galina's sister turns into a jackdaw after giving birth. Her pursuit of the truth leads her into a mystical underworld where Russian legends, fables, and ordinary citizens have wound up after being forgotten or detached from the world.

Every character has an interesting history, and this provides some of the best storytelling in the story. We get to meet characters of Russian folklore...more

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May 13, 2009 Jacqie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Neil Gaiman has a blurb on the front of this book, and I was hoping that the story would follow through on the promise that Sedia does for Moscow what Gaiman does for London. However, I feel this book probably suffered in translation. Many of the Russian mythic or legendary figures were unfamiliar to me, so I wasn't sure why one was supposed to be so scary. Everything seemed a bit too matter-of-fact for characters falling into an underground part of Moscow where pagan deities and folklore creatu...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sedia has made something of a name for herself in the steampunk genre, mainly with her later novels, but this one is a fine place to start with her fantasy noir set in Moscow and, while contemporary, informed by longstanding Russian mythology and legends. Filled with touches of the supernatural and a strong steampunk-inspired aesthetic, complex dialog, and well-formed characters, it's not hard to get lost in Sedia's telling of a mythical variant of the chaos of the post-Soviet arena that was Mos...more

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Feb 28, 2010 Yoon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sff

This is more of a 3.5/5 stars: lovely prose, wry oddling humor interspersed with an interesting patchwork of grim history and uncompromising fairytale logic. Three people in Moscow (I think) stumble into an otherworld of mythic and historical figures: a schizophrenic woman looking for her sister, who apparently turned into a jackdaw and vanished; the cop she asked for help; and a street artist haunted by the memory of the Roma girl he spurned years ago.

I liked the first quarter or so of the book...more

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Feb 05, 2013 Shannon rated it 4 of 5 stars

The rap on this book is that it's "like Neverwhere, but bleaker and more depressing." I bought it because I love Neverwhere, and then let it sit gathering dust on my shelf for a year because I didn't feel like reading a really depressing book.

Now I wish I hadn't waited so long. "The Secret History of Moscow" takes its characters on a quest through the underworld of Russian folklore to rescue a stolen sister: I found it beautifully written and, actually, a lot of fun. I wouldn't call it "depressi...more

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Sep 10, 2009 Andreas rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Stay away.

Shelves: fantasy

What a great idea! Moscow has a hidden underground world, populated with many mythic figures as well as some lucky people from the surface (our world). Something is going on though, people have started to disappear...

Unfortunately I couldn't get into the story. First of all I didn't like the way how the background of the characters is told. It's not cleverly interwoven into the story, no, there is always a clear cut and the reader is presented with all the facts (usually closely related to some...more

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Jan 12, 2009 Tyler rated it 1 of 5 stars

People all over Moscow are disappearing and a few people are claiming to the police that the people that are disappearing are actually turning into birds. Galina's sister Masha is one of the disappeared. Galina, a policeman Yakov and a street painter, Fyodor, head out to try and track down where all the birds are going to when they enter an underground world full of Moscovites from past and present as well as beings from Russian folktales. Galina, Yakov and Fyodor continue to try and track the b...more

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Jan 02, 2008 Mathew rated it 3 of 5 stars

For fans of Neil Gaiman. This is an entertaining book that is a combination of the Gaiman's "American Gods" and "Neverwhere." Set in Moscow and dealing with ancient Russian legends, it may not be as familiar to readers as the pantheons that Gaiman uses, but it sucks you in just the same.

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Mar 10, 2009 Arthur rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: disliked, bad-fantasy, stand-alone-read, fantasy

It didn't live up to my expectations

Reading blogs' reviews on this book, I was under the impression it was a good fantasy.
It is not.
I would say it is a fiction with a bit of introduction of Russian fairy tales protagonists such as Koschey the Deathless, some bits and pieces of history of Moscow, points of view of people who lived in the former USSR and witnessed the cataclysm of Perestroyka but otherwise it is a very odd book.
I didn't like it. I found it extremely boring. All the time I hoped so...more

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Jan 06, 2011 emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, fiction-fantasy, fiction-grownup-books, fiction-urban-fantasy, fiction-young-adult, owned-by-me

this book wasn't bad. it was similar to neverwhere except set in moscow (neil gaiman does the byline on the cover and says as much) and i liked it for the same reasons i like neverwhere. it felt like a lot of the other russian lit i've read-- a little stark, a little spare, but darkly interesting. i also enjoy the changing points of view, giving us a bit of backstory on everyone. i know as the reader i was meant to sympathize with galina, but honestly the populace of the underground were my favo...more

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About Ekaterina Sedia

Ekaterina Sedia is also credited as E. Sedia.

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“You know how they say the grass is always greener on the other side? It is greener, because you're not there. And if you go you'll trample it and leave dirty footprints and probably spill something poisonous.” — 8 people liked it

“He was still wide awake when the morning came - the light changed imperceptibly underground, with the glowtrees flaring up brightly, and the shimmer of golden dust that remained suspended in the musty air, as if millions of butterflies had shed the scales of their wings in midair.” — 3 people liked it

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