Mikhail joins the People's Volunteers to fight the advancing Germans, while Anna and thousands of other women dig anti-tank traps on the city's outskirts.

Limited food supplies arrive via the ice road over the frozen Lake Ladoga, but they are nowhere near sufficient to feed the city of over three million people.

Nimura felt that the book is "quieter and more powerful" than her previous historical novel, A Spell of Winter, and added, "There is no need here to manufacture fear.

"[5] John Mulian, in The Guardian, focused on the importance of the basic need of sustenance to stay alive in the early days of the siege, and described the novel as an "agonizing read".

"[6] In another review in The Guardian, Isobel Montgomery found The Siege to be "delicately evocative and immensely readable", yet "in some primary way indigestible.

Montgomery wrote that while the book's characters are well crafted and believable, they tend to "fall into expected patterns" when dealing with "real places and events".

Montgomery concluded that while Leningrad's history is a rich source of material to write about, "it is questionable whether The Siege is equal to that depth, or ever probes beyond its obvious paths.