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