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A review by sarahholliday
The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
In this bloody, visceral fantasy, author Ava Reid draws on Jewish mythology and Hungarian history to construct a strange-yet-familiar world in which religious zealotry and political intrigue take center stage.
Évike is a brash, impulsive heroine with a surprisingly compassionate and vulnerable underbelly. I loved her almost immediately. It took me a bit longer to warm to Gáspár, with his scowls and judgements, but Reid does a wonderful job of slowly revealing the figure of a young man desperate to do the right thing while healing from a lifetime of pain and isolation. The two make a formidable and entertaining team, and the slow-burn romance between them is based on intellectual chemistry as much as physical attraction.
The nuance that Reid offers when it comes to faith, religious devotion, zealotry, and power is impressive. I always enjoy stories that reveal the chaos and tenuousness of political stability, particularly in moments of revolts or transitions of power, and The Wolf and the Woodsman delivers on that front. It's also unusual for so many different magic systems to exist in a single fantasy world, but it allowed Reid to examine the malleability of faith without having to dig into questions of theology.
Overall, The Wolf and the Woodsman is an intelligent, haunting, beautifully written story by an #OwnVoices author that contributes to the much-needed diversification of the fantasy genre. The folklore-style telling & multiple magic systems can be difficult to follow at times, but the novel as a whole shines through these rough patches.
Évike is a brash, impulsive heroine with a surprisingly compassionate and vulnerable underbelly. I loved her almost immediately. It took me a bit longer to warm to Gáspár, with his scowls and judgements, but Reid does a wonderful job of slowly revealing the figure of a young man desperate to do the right thing while healing from a lifetime of pain and isolation. The two make a formidable and entertaining team, and the slow-burn romance between them is based on intellectual chemistry as much as physical attraction.
The nuance that Reid offers when it comes to faith, religious devotion, zealotry, and power is impressive. I always enjoy stories that reveal the chaos and tenuousness of political stability, particularly in moments of revolts or transitions of power, and The Wolf and the Woodsman delivers on that front. It's also unusual for so many different magic systems to exist in a single fantasy world, but it allowed Reid to examine the malleability of faith without having to dig into questions of theology.
Overall, The Wolf and the Woodsman is an intelligent, haunting, beautifully written story by an #OwnVoices author that contributes to the much-needed diversification of the fantasy genre. The folklore-style telling & multiple magic systems can be difficult to follow at times, but the novel as a whole shines through these rough patches.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Antisemitism, Blood, Death, Gore, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Violence, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Child abuse