The Wolf and the Woodsman

The Sunday Times Bestseller

hardcover

Published June 8, 2021 by Del Rey.

ISBN:
978-1-5291-0073-0
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4 stars (16 reviews)

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 …

10 editions

[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 …

Review of 'The Wolf and the Woodsman' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

There were aspects of this I was enjoying despite the flat characters. But then I learned the protagonist is 25 and I was like, wait, what? She’s not 16 or something? Her behavior read much younger than she is.

I also knew there was a romance, which is not typically my thing, but I was open to it. But then I got introduced to the guy, and it fell into all too familiar, boring (to me) patterns. Significant looks at the protagonist that she’s puzzled by but we all know what’s up.

I was enjoying the horror moments and the setting, but I need to like the plot and characters, too.

Review of 'The Wolf and the Woodsman' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. The good parts were good (the characterization), the bad parts were bad (the... politics?), the mediocre parts were mediocre (the worldbuilding). That said, I can't tell how much of that is my own personal expectations not being met, versus the novel doing what it's set itself up to do. The book is very front-loaded with fairy tales, should I be disappointed in its lack of a darker ending, when so much of the book itself is dark and brooding?

Without giving any spoilers away, let me just say I think the book is perfect if you chop the epilogue off. But I'm maybe overfond of ambiguity.

Medieval Jews... don't make it out okay. Pagans... don't make it at all. This book seems to be somewhat more interested in history than fairy tales, but perhaps that's, again, my preference for historicity over …

Review of 'The Wolf and the Woodsman' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Basically Shadow and Bone but a more fleshed out world that more closely reflects real world history. Bleak AF right from the beginning. Still, there's something interesting being said about religion, stories, and how those shape, separate, and bring together peoples of different heritage and cultures, so I guess it gets four stars from me.

Review of 'The Wolf and the Woodsman' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I lost the plot so many times reading this. I don't know if it was the names or something else, but it was never clear what anyone's motivation was, nor what the limits of their power were.

I did enjoy some of the set pieces where there was a direct link to fables.

Review of 'The Wolf and the Woodsman' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The Wolf and the Woodsman is set in a world frequented by religious persecution. The official religion of the country is the Patrifaith, sacrificing parts of themselves to Saint Istan to be gifted power in return. The Patritians wish to rid their land of both pagans and Yehuli, a religion that represents Judaism in this world. I liked that while they all had their different beliefs, that belief all gave them magic of a kind. Not one religion was “the right one”.

The one-eyed Woodsman turns out to be no ordinary Woodsman, and soon him and Évike are on a quest to find a mythical beast that might just be the answer to both their problems. Évike might have been bullied all her life but she still sees herself as a wolf girl, she still doesn’t want to see her home and her family destroyed, even if she doesn’t like …

Review of 'Wolf and the Woodsman' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN is an enemies-to-lovers tale filled with bickering and tender moments of wound-care. It luxuriates in tense conversation, short back-and-forth dialogues punctuated by stony silence and snow. The MC’s narrative ruminations on her traveling companion deftly show what she thinks of him while leaving room for something more in his body language that an interested reader might puzzle out. They fill the silence in a way that ensures the reader is never left alone, even while the MC is trapped in her head, relentlessly pondering the meaning of every word, silence, and gesture from the Woodsman. They are drawn together by a strangely aligned goals that have, at minimum, a destination in common for both of them. Once at this destination, the narrative opens somewhat while still keeping focus on the weight of words and the way they can twist in an instant from toying to …

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