G. Deyke reviewed The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid
[Adapted from initial review on Goodreads.]
3 stars
I wasn't sure about this book at first, for a few reasons - the biggest being the way it seemed to be setting up a romance between a woman from an oppressed minority (consistently referred to as a "girl" despite her 25 years), and a man who is her oppressor. He abducts her and does a bunch of horrible stuff, but as they travel together and are forced to rely on each other, she grows into lust for him and he becomes increasingly humanized. That's... not a dynamic I enjoy reading, nor one I approve of: it reads as regressive, and a good half of the book is pretty much devoted to it.
The good news is that as it goes on, it grows into nuance. People actually grow and learn, and while this dubious romance bit is critical to that - the humanization goes both ways - it's not …
I wasn't sure about this book at first, for a few reasons - the biggest being the way it seemed to be setting up a romance between a woman from an oppressed minority (consistently referred to as a "girl" despite her 25 years), and a man who is her oppressor. He abducts her and does a bunch of horrible stuff, but as they travel together and are forced to rely on each other, she grows into lust for him and he becomes increasingly humanized. That's... not a dynamic I enjoy reading, nor one I approve of: it reads as regressive, and a good half of the book is pretty much devoted to it.
The good news is that as it goes on, it grows into nuance. People actually grow and learn, and while this dubious romance bit is critical to that - the humanization goes both ways - it's not just as simple as "falling in love with the enemy swaps everyone's ideology and solves all the problems". So that turns out to be all right. Sort of.
The other main reason is the writing style, which I'm not personally much of a fan of: very, very dense with description and figurative language, with absolutely constant use of active voice, to the point where there's no dynamic range to speak of. It's weirdened a bit further by the way it interacts with the perspective - first person present tense is usually good for immediacy and character, while the density of the prose has a distancing effect and the implication that Évike constantly thinks in this active-language-metaphors way is not really reflected or explored in the rest of her characterization. I could imagine there being a good reason for this, if it better reflects Hungarian speech patterns or something, but speaking as someone who knows no Hungarian whatsoever I can't tell if that's the case. Regardless: some dynamics would have helped.
The worldbuilding fits a weird in-between spot: I was expecting a world built around Hungarian folklore, but this is probably rather alt-historical. There are Fantasy Jews. There is Fantasy Christianity (but with a different, Fantasy Greek origin story). Fantasy Hungary borders on Fantasy Austria-or-Germany-or-something. With everything seemingly having a direct real-world analogue, I'm hesitant to call this secondary-world fantasy, but everything is also different enough that I'm not sure I've learned anything about any actual cultures, current or historical.
The one thing that I really, really like about this book, though, is the way it deals with religion. There are three main cultures/religions mentioned (a fourth is not gone into much detail over) and while the narrative to some extent pits them against each other, there's magic (though sometimes not called by that name) associated with each of them. I like the way that contradicting religions are all treated as... I want to say "true", but truth doesn't enter into it, not really; but as powerful, at any rate. The characters take sides, of course, but the worldbuilding itself doesn't favor any one religion and also doesn't favor atheism, which is a really neat effect and not one I'm sure I've ever seen before!
I also like the way that religion shapes the characters' worldviews and ideologies, even when you take away the beliefs and mythology and faith-based powers and whatnot. Culture is often reduced to things like food and clothes and how people celebrate which holidays, and that's all part of it to be sure, but this book did a great job of exploring the way it can shape people even aside from all those trappings.
Selling points: alt-historical if you're into that; interesting and fairly nuanced take on religion; casual lesbian representation (minor, almost background); (fantasy) Jewish representation.
Warnings: slightly heavy-handed romance with extremely unequal power dynamic; religious violence; moderately graphic violence, though I find the writing style somewhat dampens the effect of it; not enough passive voice.