A review by bookmarkmyword
The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

Did not finish book. Stopped at 38%.

i did enjoy what i've seen of the lore/world building so far, the stories about deities thar the main character tells were interesting. and i liked the allegory on religion as a supremacist tool of oppression. but other than those, i haven't found anything else riveting enough to make me keep going. and the further i went into it, the more i lose interest so eventually i decided to just stop.

one of the major points of the story is to show that despite the main character's glaring differences with the love interest, they do have similarities and that they're significant enough for them to somehow be able to build understanding and even trust off of. but try as i might, i'm just not convinced.

my main issue with this is that gáspár and his people's views and treatment of évike's community is decidedly *not* on equal playing field as her people's contempt (and fear!) of the woodsmen, yet the narrative treats these two things as though they are. the woodsmen by order of the king literally aims to commit (if not already are committing) genocide on evike's people when all they want is to be left alone to live freely just like everybody else. her resentment and fear of him come from a real and valid place while his views and contempt of her come from lies propagated by power-hungry and bigoted people like the king and his brother who's seeking the throne. there is power at play in this world at large that is in favor of gáspár. no matter how badly he is being treated by his own blood and people, he will *never* experience the same cruelty that his king of a father and he himself as a woodsman bestow upon évike's community, at least not for the same reason. that's privilege and yet he never even deigns to acknowledge it.

also the "difference" they have? i wouldn't call it that, as they're not matters of personal taste on some frivolous thing. évike *belongs* to an oppressed group (shunned though she was within it) while gáspár is an *active agent* of oppression against said group. that this keeps being *glossed over* every time the "similarities" of their personal situations are brought up doesn't sit right with me. maybe it will be addressed later on but at this point, i don't want to wait and see if it will be different farther down the line anymore.

which brings me to my next point: those things considered, i don't get how évike was already entertaining thoughts about how attractive gáspár is so soon into the story. his behavior and views of her community are not something one simply gets past behind, no matter how aesthetically that person might be. i can kind of get the idea of forced proximity playing a part on their "mutual attraction" but i just can't wrap my head around how soon she was entertaining thoughts of how handsome he is, considering he hasn't even yet shown that he's trustworthy or at the very least open-minded enough to be willing to listen and learn from her experience of his people. yet somehow she already looks at him somewhat favorably,
enough to have had sex with him
? i don't buy it.

anyways, comparing this book to naomi novik's spinning silver and katherine arden's the bear and the nightingale—both my all-time favorites!—is certainly... a choice. all i'm saying is whoever came up with that idea doesn't know what they're talking about. this is as similar to those two books as flipflops are similar to dress shoes.
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