Fic­tion

Eden­frost

Amit Tish­ler and Bruno Fren­da, illus.

  • Review
By – August 26, 2024

His­tor­i­cal fan­ta­sy nov­els and Slav­ic folk­lore make a great pair. Both often fea­ture sur­vival in a strange land­scape, as well as mag­i­cal crea­tures min­gling with humans in clever and mys­te­ri­ous ways. 

Some mod­ern, Slav­ic-inspired fan­ta­sy works will also include a csar-like fig­ure, or a roy­al monar­chy based on any num­ber of long-reign­ing his­tor­i­cal fig­ures in the Romanov dynasty. How­ev­er, these hybrid fan­ta­sy-and-his­tor­i­cal works some­times over­look the rich cul­ture of Slav­ic Jews through­out East­ern Europe, and can be alien­at­ing to Jew­ish audi­ences who are aware of the long his­to­ry of anti­semitism and pogroms per­pet­u­at­ed under these states. 

Amit Tishler’s Eden­frost is a graph­ic nov­el that takes its own stance on the genre of his­tor­i­cal fan­ta­sy. The book fol­lows sib­lings Alex and Yuli as they trav­el through the Ukrain­ian coun­try­side and out­run mil­i­taris­tic forces dur­ing the Russ­ian Civ­il War. They rely on the mag­ic of the golem to pro­tect them and their her­itage and attempt to find shel­ter in the forest. 

The chil­dren often find them­selves in com­pro­mis­ing sit­u­a­tions, lying about their Jew­ish faith and unsure whom to trust. The graph­ic imagery is more dom­i­nant than the dia­logue and even­tu­al­ly leads to full-col­or spreads of land­scapes and action shots. In the most elo­quent­ly writ­ten sec­tions, mono­logue frag­ments from the mind of Alex are illus­trat­ed like diary entries. The use of nar­ra­tive blood­shed and racial­ized slurs against Jews in Rus­sia can be dif­fi­cult to con­front, but these details are his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate, and they show­case the work’s attempt to engage read­ers in a Slav­ic fan­ta­sy that relies not on whim­sy and mag­ic, but instead on a long his­to­ry of cul­tur­al pain and mourning. 

Isla Lad­er is a jour­nal­ist and Eng­lish MA stu­dent with a bach­e­lors in polit­i­cal sci­ence. When they’re not writ­ing, they are per­form­ing com­e­dy, read­ing Table Top Role Play Guide­books, or explor­ing alley­ways for for­got­ten furniture.

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