The Wolf and the Woodsman
Ratings49
Average rating3.4
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.
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On the face of it this is an interesting mix of reference points - eastern European folklore, paganism vs christianity, imperialism and cultural suppression. We follow the story of Evike, a pagan who is betrayed by her village and given as tribute to an imperialistic conqueror. But following betrayals and borderline civil war in that conquering nation she finds herself allied with a disgraced prince who has been betrayed.
The underlying themes are fascinating. The brutality of cultural suppression and cultural appropriation are taken on in an unflinching manner. Where I struggle is more in the character relationships, and the journey undertaken. Evike and Gaspar Barany relationship feels flat for much of the book to me. I struggle with some of the motivations in the characters. The marching up and down the country is exhausting to read and it feels repetitive. The themes are fascinating, the execution was not quite what I hoped for. It is still an interesting read, but unfortunately the characters ended up being a bit forgettable.
3.5/5 Stars
So I'm gonna sleep on my star rating and perhaps change it in the morning. I rounded down because I found there to be a lack of chemistry between the two main characters (the love story was not the knock-off Nina&Matthias romance I was lead into believing it would be) and I was confused about a lot of things that happened in this book (I still don't know how the main character lost her pinky
don't hate me but i laughed at the ending like YEAH that's how u defeat that particular bad guy... anyway
i ADORED this book and how beautiful and lyrical it was. following evike and gaspar on this journey that was deeply entrenched in world-building made it so hard to put this book down. the beginning of the book was a little rough, but after about 15% of the way through i really got hooked (but of course... life got in the way)
i echo all the praises being sung for this book!
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