Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - The Wolf and the Woodsman

After receiving the wolf in the woodsman in my illumicrate books I could not wait to read it. That edition is ✨STUNNING✨ But the normal book is gorgeous as well! The story of this book really met all my expectations! So what are the reasons I fell in love with this book:

Characters
Characters are really important to me, I can read a book with a weak plot as long as I love the characters but a book with sloppy characters is something I cannot stand…

These characters were well done, they had multiple layers to them. Faults, good traits, dreams and anxieties. They felt very real, did I like all of them? No, of course not but where they well rounded characters? Hell yess!!!

Worldbuilding
I am a sucker for rich world with a fairytale base especially if the fairytale’s are from Russian mythology. The world was really magical but with a lot of ruff edges. It’s very well done.

Plotbuilding
This is the category where the book lacks a little bit. I felt like Ava Reid wanted to bring to much to the table but it wasn’t possible to fit everything in the books 400 pages. I feel like it could have been better if some of the side plots would have been removed. One of my biggest critics is the lovestory. I shipped the couple but I would have loved more time with them. It feels like we do not get to see the love develop because Ava Reid doesn’t take the time she needs to conclude that part of the story. I would love to have seen more of the relations developments. But keep in mind that this is the only criticism I can deliver for this book.

Recommendations
Like a lot of others I saw the same vibe in this book as in the books of Katharine Arden and in Spinning Silver/ Uprooted by Naomi Novik. It has the same feeling but it doesn’t have the proza/writing flow as those other books. I missed that a little bit in the wolf and the woodsmen. But still I feel like this book could really be something for you if you liked uprooted, spinning silver and the Bear and the nightingale.

Content Warnings

unwise_samwise's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-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? It's complicated

3.0

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oliverreeds's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

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

3.0

this book was fine. i don't understand what all of the hype is about around its release because, while the characters and their relationships are well-written, the magic and world-building seemed a little scant. i have no doubt the author spent a ridiculous amount of time building lore and that is evident, but i didn't understand a lot of the lore. it felt like when a super smart professor is explaining a very detailed and advanced concept and just kind of expects you to know it. the history of the the world just didn't make much sense and wasn't explained as well as i wanted it to be. most of the book

is spent looking for this creature called the tulur? and maybe i just didn't read super carefully, but i had no idea what the tulur actually meant to the world until it died. and even then nothing seemed to have changed. there was still magic. the trees seemed to still be alive. so why was there such a thing about killing this bird. i didn't understand it

. i also didn't understand the way magic works in this story. the wolf-girls are (mostly) all born with magic- all except evike. great. that makes sense. but then

evike wants magic so she cuts of her finger as a sacrifice to one of the gods and he just... gives her magic? i didn't understand this. it didn't make any sense. and then without practicing using her magic, evike fully shatters an axe in the royal court without really knowing what the perameters of her magic or the cost of her magic. the rules seemed flimsy. especially when she saves Gaspar after they're attacked by the witch. how did she save him?? she can't heal people??

. i also thought it was interesting that there are so many religions (only three) but they all have their own magic given from their own god which seems to imply that all of the gods actually exist in this universe. this then begs the question: why is there so much hate? the hate the woodsmen feel towards the pagans never is fully explained. i kind of understand the metaphor the author was working with, but in general, it felt forced sometimes. like... why? the pacing of this book was also pretty slow. in the climax moments, i didn't feel like there was much of a climax.

like when evike has just been stabbed. i was like oh sh*t! but then she just like gets up? and walks to gaspars room and then she rests for like ten minutes and then she's just like fine. like she's having a full conversation when she was just on the brink of death. this also happens in the pagan battle at the very end. nandor has just pulled out evike's molars (by all means a traumatic and painful experience) and then after the whole gaspar nandor fight, she's just fine? she kisses gaspar but like she just had like buckets of blood in her mouth??? the severity of wounds was definitely something that didn't make much sense to me because a character would be seriously wounded (often to the brink of death) and then like have full on coherent conversations and then get up and walk around.

the first part of this book also read a lot like fanficiton (which i honestly didn't have a problem with. it was my favorite part of the book no cap) because it's all about the

slow romance between evike and gaspar so evike will like almost freeze to death or pass out or something and then gaspar (shocker) will save her or help her. like the amount of times evike ~almost~ died on the way up to find the tulur the first time was honestly wild.

but overall, the characters were interesting and i liked the in depth analysis of how religious bigotry effects people, romance, and governing states. i thought it was a good first book.

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad 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

5.0

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 cruel, from mild interest to genuine warmth. Its slowly widening scope introduces the political tightrope the MC must traverse. Here it becomes apparent that amid all that travel, banter, and attempts to not fall in love was a lot of very important information about the power structure and current state of the kingdom and its leader. I really like political structures in fantasy, and therefore was very interested in this one, but it isn’t a politically dense book. It conveyed really well essential social information in a seemingly inconsequential manner before the MC arrived in locations where she needed to use that knowledge, and I appreciate how well it was worked in.

One of the strengths of this as an enemies-to-lovers story was that the MC and the eventual love interest had pretty good reasons to dislike each other as kinds of people, but not to already hate each other specifically, which made the transformation from ire to romance feel believable but not rushed. A lot of really excellent emotional groundwork and world-building was laid in the first half of the book, which meant that the second half could carefully subvert some (but not all) of those expectations and play with their implications in some really great ways. I feel a little as though that’s just how good books work, but the first and second half feel so distinct to me. Each had their own unique flavor which made the whole book sing. The world building is really good. I like the way that there were canonically several paths to magic, all of which are different in their particulars but involve some combination of access, mastery, and sacrifice. The MC begins the book thinking that she is unable to use the path that everyone has been expecting her to have. she finds her way into the path that’s good for her; not wholly new ground, something recognizable to those around her even if her specific blend is a bit strange.

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