Blog Tour: The Wolf and the Woodsman

Today’s our stop on the blog tour for The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid! If you haven’t already come across this book, well. You are missing out massively. A gorgeously atmospheric and slowburning, Jewish and Hungarian fantasy, if you read a single adult fantasy novel this year, it should be this one. (And if you catch me saying that about several others too? No, you don’t <3)

So, sit yourself comfortably and have a read of exactly why we think you should be reading this book. And don’t forget to follow Ava on instagram!

(And when you admit we’re right, and pick this book up, make sure you do so listening to Anna’s mix.)

In the vein of Naomi Novik’s New York Times bestseller Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden’s national bestseller The Bear and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut— inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology—follows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart a tyrant.

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.

As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.

The Wolf and the Woodsman

Ava Reid

Goodreads

Rep: sapphic characters
CWs: magic requiring self harm, eye horror, gore, dismemberment, torture, animal deaths, antisemitism, ethnic cleansing, child abuse
Release: 8th June 2021

We’ve spent a long while just wondering how to review The Wolf and the Woodsman. You know how those books you love the most are always the hardest ones to find the words for? Well that’s the case here. We’re both full of a lot of feelings, but not a lot of words to describe them. (And also failed to write any notes for this, because it’s one of those books that you pick up and you just can’t stop reading long enough to make them. Woops.)

The book follows Évike, the only woman without power in her village, who is handed over to the Holy Order of Woodsmen as blood sacrifice by the people she had trusted. One of those Woodsmen is Gáspár, the crown prince. The two form a tentative alliance to search for the magic that will save Évike’s life and give Gáspár’s father the power to remain on the throne, fending off a bid for power from Gáspár’s zealot half-brother.

What drives this book for us is Évike and Gáspár’s relationship as it moves from enemies to reluctant allies to reluctantly (and angrily) attracted to one another, right up to lovers. We loved them. It’s a relationship that leaves you still thinking about them months later. It’s a relationship that just sinks its teeth into you and won’t let go. They are, by far and away, our favourite part of this book (we say, having loved basically everything about it anyway).

The other favourite aspect of this book that we had, though, was the story it told. It’s a fantasy world that considers the building of nation states. There are some things that you just don’t see a whole lot of in fantasy, and nation states are part of that. (As a side note, 2021 fantasy has some excellent books that explore the less-explored areas of fantasy and we’re loving it.) We think it’s especially pertinent now too, with the (re)rise of those sorts of politics (cough cough Brexit, but you can look into the past to find examples too. Think Edward I of England or la Reconquista). This paragraph is a mess, but what we’re trying to say is that fantasy is at its best when it doesn’t take simplistic, imperialist narratives, when it explores what you rarely get taught unless you take a subject to a higher level (looking at you, UK history curriculum). And we think this book provides the best example of that.

It would be remiss of us not to mention just how deeply Jewish and Hungarian this fantasy world is too. In a publishing landscape where both are still very much sidelined, this book was a breath of fresh air. There is a (very welcome) trickle of fantasy not inspired by faux-medieval Western Europe making its way into adult lit now, and this is by far and away one of the best examples of it thus far.

All of which to say, we think The Wolf and the Woodsman has firmly cemented itself as one of our favourite books of the year, and one that should definitely be on your radar.

So, have we convinced you that you want to read this book?

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