Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - The Wolf and the Woodsman

Really enjoyed this one! As always Ava Reid makes her FMC strong and admirable but also she sure makes them suffer which did make this book a bit daunting for me. However it paid off. This is a complex world with lots of lore and legends and magic that was very well spelled out. The relationships are complex and grow beautifully. The characters are multi faceted - while some are so obviously bad or so obviously good there are many that are more morally grey and complicated. And of course I’m a sucker for a good love story so I liked the slow build of Gaspar and Evike’s relationship.

The ending was left a little open with with respect to their relationship going forward which bummed me out a bit, I was really hoping they would be solidly together.

overall fantastic book!

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ska1224's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

them 🤲

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witcheep's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book is a dark adventure of folktale-inspired worldbuilding that relies heavily on body horror laced into the magic system and cruel characters ruling over others. The body horror and brutality made me wince, the extent of them were too much for me. However, the book is also a tale of fragile hope building between Évike and Gáspár, the main characters with two very different world views learning to understand and support each other. Their deepening relationship and shifting worldviews were what kept me reading the book further.

"What would you have me do?" he asks. "You have already ruined me."

The worldbuilding showcases a colonizing worldview where the ruling religious group deems other religions, cultures, and ethnicities inferior and something that should be purged. The oppressor-religious group is content on using the other groups to their own benefit, though. They take the others' magic, lives, and even their folklore, but bend it so that it fits their own religious world view. This changing of stories takes the voice away from the original people, hiding them.

You can't hoard stories the way you hoard gold, despite what Virág would say. There's nothing to stop anyone from taking the bits they like, and changing or erasing the rest, [--]

The ruling people of the world do this even to their own kings: their legacy is carved in stone only after their death, when he kings themself won't be able to have a say in it anymore, so the living may decide what kind of kingdom they have left behind. Words have power, and the rulers are very strict with who gets a say in anything important. Hence, the cruelty of rendering other people voiceless extends to every level of the society, making power a fleeting thing instead of a lasting impression.

Reid brings up the topic of picking parts of someone else's folklore and rebuilding it to fit one's own needs multiple times. She seems to have a message that this kind of cultural appropriation is bad, but cannot be stopped. She flashes different possibilities of the groups either being forcefully assimilated into the ruling religious ways, staying separate and against each other, or finding a way to mix and coexist.

Maybe by doing so Reid wants to justify her own usage of source material and research for this book: Reid herself has clearly used this strategy of reusing stories while writing this book. She has combed through different mythologies, religious and cultural lore and histories, and uses them quite loosely as her material, combining them into her fantasy world and disregarding some parts or facts altogether. Reid uses at least jewish lore, Eastern European mythology, history and names, and Finnish national epic Kalevala. I was first intriqued by this, but the execution left me wanting a retelling more true to the elements of the original tales or an altogether more original lore to this fantasy world.

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evelphysicist's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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lovefromhannah's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

ava reid is a literary force to be reckoned with.

despite this being her debut, I actually read juniper and thorn prior to this. perhaps this was a mistake on my behalf as I enjoyed that more. whereas this fantasy is more folklore, oral tradition, holly black-esque conventions, juniper and thorn is more adjacent to the horror of girlhood, body autonomy and complex family relationships. on paper, I was destined to like juniper and thorn more - but I still really enjoyed the wolf and the woodsman and being witness to her growth as a writer.

I was originally going to give this 4.5 stars I kid you not: in the epilogue there are a couple of lines that suggest that there is a good chance the main romance don't end up together after the events of the book?!?! like you just said you would make her your wife and now (and I quote):

"One day when I come for our council meetings," I begin carefully, "you will have a new bride. You must."

...

To my suprise, Gaspar only lifts a shoulder. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. If the king has no true-born son, the crown will fall to a brother, a cousin, an uncle. The line of succession is more like a long thread that that spirals across our family tree. I can always name another heir."

It is enough to for me to hold on to, hope as thin as the knife's edge hanging above us. I will grasp it even if it cuts me; I will keep it from falling." (pp. 408-9)

Although, whilst writing quoting I do appreciate the mistletoe imagery. And honestly, the yearning and the tension was so well written that out of spite I might drop my rating to 4 stars.

I will continue to devour ava reid's backlog as I wait (im)patiently for lady macbeth to release.

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jessereadsthings's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

3.0

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kellimalea's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I think this is a great fantasy novel for someone who is interested in an adventurous story, but doesn't want to commit to a big series. I definitely think the story could have been fleshed out into multiple books, but it doesn't suffer from lack of content. The development of relationships between people would probably make more sense if it had been stretched out over multiple books, but I think it all still works well. I love that this story draws from Hungarian and Jewish folklore/history, as these aren't common sources for most American literature. I thought the world building was phenomenal. I would recommend this book, with the caveat that it is a dark and heavy read, so may not be everybody's cup of tea.

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moonchild_cos's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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