Rus, Russia and Ukraine between Fairy Tales and History: Alternative Slavic Fantasy by English-Language Writers

This is the second part of the paper (for introduction and the first part which addresses Medieval Rus in Peter Morwood’s and Katherine Arden’s trilogies see Studia Mythologica Slavica 24 (2021): 13–32). Alternative Slavic fantasy is defined as fantastika (speculative fiction) created by English-language writers on the basis of real or assumed Slavic folklore, separate from Slavic fantasy per se. The focus of the current part is the logic of interaction between Slavic and/or quasi-Slavic folk plots and characters with Russian and Ukrainian history of the 19th–20th centuries in Evelin Skye’s dilogy and Catherynne Valente’s and Orson Scott Card’s novels.