Author: Ava Reid
Series: Standalone
Genre: Adult Fantasy/Mythology
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Edition: Kindle Edition, 448 pages
Source: NetGalley
Synopsis:
Stories don't have to be true to be real...
In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. 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 to rely on each other. Except he's no ordinary Woodsman - he's the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it's like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.
As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they're on, and what they're willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.
This book is so damn good. It's taken me a couple days to really gather my thoughts and get them all down in a way that makes sense. Ava Reid is a debut author, but she writes, in my opinion, like a seasoned author. She has some Content Warnings for this book. And while I personally don't typically note them, as I am never sure what constitutes something that should be noted as a Content Warning, here is what she has listed for CW's:
- Gore, including graphic descriptions of dismemberment, amputation, mutilation, and immolation
- Torture, including whipping
- Self-harm, including self-amputation
- Animal death (graphic; the animals are not pets)
- Antisemitism
- Cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing
- Physical abuse by parents and parental figures
- Graphic descriptions of vomiting
It's a little slow-paced, but never boring. It just has a really good buildup to the climax of the book. There is a lot of character development in that time with the main characters. This book takes place over a relatively short amount of time, but it is packed with character development, great worldbuilding, and an interesting magic system based on physical sacrifice.
Évike is a character who has a lot of personal inner struggles, and her path to self-acceptance was very believable. She learns about the other side of her heritage and their stories, and the stories of the people she was raised to hate and fear, and she starts to see that things aren't as simple as she first assumed.
Gáspár is another well-rounded character. He goes through a similar path of character growth involving self-acceptance. His is just as personal, but the other side of it. Him coming to terms with his father and brother and even the religion he devoted his life to aren't as fallible as he once believed. That their way is hypocritical at best, and fundamentally flawed at worst. And he too had to realize that things aren't as black and white.
The magic system, in a word, gruesome. The Pagan women are born with magic that often comes with some kind of physical mutation and the magic of the Woodsmen involves the physical sacrifice of mutilation. The magic of the Yehuli wasn't as clear to me. And all the magic that can be performed by each group is different, I am unsure how to explain it. It might lean a little into spoilers.
There is a bit of romance, in this book. It's very much a background plotline, and while it does affect character motivations, it doesn't overrule anything else in this book. I felt that this was a much better balance with the other more pressing plotlines than a lot of other fantasy books that have a romance.
I have no idea if this is a standalone book, or if there will be more books later. Things to get wrapped up at the end. But I also want to know more about this world.
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