Review of "Several years of Winter" by Valentin Terletsky

It is often important for readers (especially supporters of fiction) to know which genre a work belongs to. What kind of world and what kind of heroes does the author offer us? What to expect - for an epic quest or for the adventures of a spirit?

Valentin Terletsky said in an interview that, together with the publisher, he attributed "Several years of winter" to social fantasy, because the book contains many allusions to the socio-political problems of the modern world. But there are no elves, dwarves and orcs who are fighting for power over this world using social networks.

In general, the fantasy component (magic, swords, strange creatures) is absent from the story, and therefore it is not entirely correct to attribute "Several years of winter" to social fantasy. However, it is quite possible to say that this is social fiction, but, in principle, it is, with certain remarks, a fairy tale - like, for example, the tales of Hoffmann, or "Three Fat Men" by Yuri Olesha, or "The Little Prince" by Exupery. A fairy tale where there is a dictatorship, revolutionaries, a professional assassin, a desert with a post-apocalyptic biker gang, mutants in caves and a bit of mysticism.

Fairy tales in any form are banned at the state level in the country, handwritten works are destroyed, and sites where they can be found are deleted or blocked from the network. Storytellers are brutally persecuted and punished. Why is this being done? Why did the government decide this way? It is unknown, and those who try to find out the truth find themselves outside the law.

Ivan, a former storyteller writer, is just trying to live quietly according to the new rules, he no longer wants anything from life and has no goals. He is indifferent to the world around him, and the world reciprocates him - until he meets Sofia, a strange woman with orange hair. After that, Ivan has a desire to write again, and he starts a new story. However, government agents break into his office and take away the manuscript. Only thanks to the help of his neighbor Grigor Zalivakha, Ivan and Sofia manage to escape, and now the storyteller is waiting for a meeting with the Kazkarzky underground, a journey into a mysterious Zone of Darkness and the stories that he will create and that will be told to him during this journey.

If you have read "The Road" by Henry Lyon Oldey from the cycle "The Abyss of Hungry Eyes", then you know that part of this book consists of separate stories that the authors decided to use as elements of the plot of the "Road". But in the "Few years of winter" the stories are not directly related to the plot. As the author himself says:

"They are one whole, like a novel within a novel. These are philosophical things in which I tried to figure out my own understanding of life and the meaning of being in general, as I feel it. This is my personal concept of the universe, no matter how loud it sounds. It is also a multi-voiced story about the hidden world that lives in each of us and at the same time surrounds us all.

These stories, as Valentin Terletsky admitted, he wrote at different times for almost twenty years. They have something in common - the meeting of a person with something incredible, mystical, secret, amazing, which transforms a person, changes not just to another person, but generally to something else, brings something superhuman into nature - or, from another point of view, makes a person human. The author also told in an interview something about archetypes and other metaphysics, but do not be afraid, in fact, there is nothing arrogant in the story, these are, first of all, good stories that are interesting outside the plot "Several years of winter". Well, whoever wants to find symbolic meanings and depths in them - well, most likely you will find them, but, in my opinion, a simple reader, it is quite possible to do without it. gerçekten hoşuma gitti başarıbet Çünkü burada gerçek parayla oynayabilirsiniz.