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Harper Voyager

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (Paperback)

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (Paperback)

$16.99 USD
$16.99 USD
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Fiction - Fantasy - Epic

Published: 2/8/2022 (in Paperback)

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. 

"Ava Reid paints a rich and complex picture of a kingdom steeped in ancient magic, straining along seams of religious and cultural tension. From the first page to the last, every facet and detail is beautifully wrought. Rooted in history and myth, The Wolf and the Woodsman is a stunning debut—a powerful and haunting tale of a young woman's will to live, of love flowering in defiance of tyranny. It will twine like a dark forest around your heart." -Samantha Shannon, New York Times bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree
"A thought-provoking, thrilling magical twist on the history of religion and politics that I couldn't put down. In her stunningly rendered—and frankly terrifying—forbidden forests, Reid conjures up some of the ghastliest monsters I've ever read, and yet never lets us forget the worst horrors are perpetuated by human hands." -S.A. Chakraborty, bestselling author of The Empire of Gold
"Gorgeously written and grimly real, The Wolf and the Woodsman is both a myth and a mirror, a bloody fable about two people caught in the jaws of history. It quite literally took my breath away. It has the unsettling-but-compelling gore of Henderson's The Year of the Witching, the folkloric lilt of The Bear and the Nightingale, and the moral complexity of Seeing Like a State. I’m obsessed.” -Alix E Harrow, Hugo Award–winning author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January
"The convincing enemies-to-lovers romance, fascinating religion-based magic system, and thoughtful examination of zealotry make this a notable debut." -Publishers Weekly
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