Ava Reid’s The Wolf And The Woodsman is not a YA novel. I’m just getting that out there right away, because I’ve seen it categorised as YA in more than one place online and there are parts of this book which are very adult. Also, the YA label would, unfortunately, put off a lot of adult readers, meaning they’d miss out on one of the best books I have read so far in 2021. The Wolf And The Woodsman is a grown-up, complicated, angsty, sexy, dark book – and one that I will be recommending far and wide.
Inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology (more on that later), this the story of Évike, the only woman in a pagan village who has no magic. Her lack of magic is blamed by the villagers on her bloodline – her father was a Yehuli man, one of the people who serve the faraway king. Every so often, the Holy Order of Woodsmen come from the king to take a pagan girl as a sacrifice, and eventually Évike is handed over. Against the odds, she falls in with the Woodsman captain, Gáspár, who turns out to be the heir of the king. They team up to fight against his fanatical half-brother’s attempt to take the throne for himself, and to save the Yehuli and pagan people alike from the persecuting hand of the patrician faith.
To call this book a fantasy or a fairy-tale is, I think, to slightly miscategorise it. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those genres of course, but I’d be more inclined to call this an alternate history. The king and the administration are Christian. The Yehuli are Jewish. This isn’t me interpreting; it is very clear on both accounts that these groups align with our real world, and that is what makes this feel like a historical novel with magic more than any other genre. The pagans, clinging on for survival at the fringes of the kingdom, are no less real although they feel slightly more fantastical as a people than the others do – but they are characters who have deliberately steeped themselves in their own mysticism, and the ‘Christians’ at least make much of the pagan magic by seeking to control and suppress it.
The whole novel has such a realistic historical feel that sometimes it comes as a surprise when the characters encounter horrifying monsters in the forest, or heal a wound with their hands. This jolt that reminds us that this isn’t quite our own world comes regularly, and keeps us on the edge as readers. Reid has woven an intricate web of history, myth and fantasy, and pulls on each thread delicately at just the right time throughout her story.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t spend some time talking about Évike, easily Reid’s best creation in this novel full of good things. In Évike, Reid has a woman who is allowed to be angry at the world and the things it has put her through. She is a survivor of what can only be called an abusive childhood, left alone when her mother died and taken in by the village seer who cares for her but is not always kind. In being half Yehuli on her father’s side, Évike is a Jewish woman too and watching her learn about her people and be accepted by them for who she is – rather than who she isn’t – is one of the joys of her character, and gives us most of the moments of light in the novel.
Making your own life from nothing, finding your place and clinging onto it with both hands, is one of the central themes of Évike’s story and nowhere is this clearer than in her relationship with Gáspár, her narrative foil. As the only legitimate son of the king, his place should be clear, but as his mother was an outsider too, Gáspár has to prove himself just as Évike does. Their love story, the coming together of two lonely, damaged people who have never before had anyone they could truly rely on, is one of the best romances I’ve seen in a long time. The yearning alone really is something else.
In The Wolf And The Woodsman, Reid has produced a seriously impressive debut novel and I for one will be keeping a keen eye on whatever comes next.
Review copy provided.
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