The Wolf and the Woodsman

[alaterdate]

I may have been way too excited for The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid to release and I bought the hardcover on release day [sad horn noises]. It's very pretty though and I did technically enjoy the book, but not release-day-(despised)hardcover-purchase-$ level of enjoy 😬

Now, this book was marketed as adult, but the writing style does not feel like an adult book. And there's not even any adult content in it that I haven't read in a YA book by this point. I get that the author was going for a more complex theme concerning religion, but just wanting that to be the thing that made the book adult did not make it so. The plot and the characters could have been so at home marketed as YA, and honestly I feel tricked into reading it tbh. I specifically bought it because it wasn't YA..................
Remembering who recommended it I thought, "Oh it's YA, hmm I'll just wait or mayhaps never read it" but I double-checked and the author & publisher are saying "it's adult!" so I went ahead, but please it really reads like it was intended to cater to the YA market, but along the way someone changed their mind at the last second. BAMBOOZLED.

With that out of the way, The Wolf and the Woodsman is a fantasy adventure about a girl named Évike from a pagan village on the edge of a young nation. The village is an outcast in the nation as the official religion abhors the pagans and Évike is an outcast in the village because of her parentage that affords her none of the magic the other village girls possess.
Each year soldiers from the nation's Holy Order of Woodsmen travel to the village to take a girl from the village to the capital because the king covets their magical powers (to pretty much everyone's displeasure). And that year they wanted the most precious and rare type of magic, which the village dare not give because only one girl currently possesses it. So they trick the Woodsmen into taking magicless Évike.

But the journey to the capital is fraught with danger and the Woodsmen are whittled down to only their captain, who—now alone with Évike—decides to change course and risk both of their lives in pursuit of a common goal.

I had a tough time getting through the main plot of this book because it meandered so much. It was transparent that the author was just having them runaround for nothing just so the characters had time to randomly recite all the myth stories.
However, one has to concede that those tales are necessary set-up for the banger of a theme the book was converging on.
I think readers can be too cynical about a long set-up, but it's like a simmering pot on its way to a boil.
But then also, we must concede that the set-up had near nothing to do with the actual immediate problem the characters had. (It's essentially a wild goose chase that gives the characters enough time to get to know each other and *checks notes* fall in love.) I think you'll like this book more if you're interested in the pagan vs holy order aspect more than the "stop the coup" plotline.

Besides the stories though, the main plot (aforementioned coup & a war plotline that I don't recall getting resolved now that I think about it) is silly and the antagonists are predictable, ineffectual, cardboard characters.
There was an attempt at state-making and political machinations, but they didn't land as well as the religion bits. It's the religion, and the stories, and belief, and magic that really shine.
There are three magic systems (supposedly), and they are each interesting even if one of them doesn't mesh as well with the other two (which seem similar enough to be the same kind of magic, but with different names). But they are all basically powered by faith, understanding, and sacrifice. I enjoyed the descriptions of the magic.

As for the main characters their internal struggles are more fleshed out than their external ones. Both of them struggle regarding their place in the world regarding their heritage and faith. However, Évike struggles more with faith and religion while Gáspár struggles more with his mixed-heritage (his mother was a foreigner).
Imo this book would have been so much better if it was centered on a struggle of faith for both of the characters. The succession plotline and the mixed-nationality being the main points for Gáspár didn't really get explored thoroughly enough to work for me and he also has very little faith doubt. Granted he's not the main character and we don't get to see anything from his viewpoint, but these characters are supposedly bonded and fall in love with each other because they share these mutual struggles and pull a "we're not so different, you and I." Yet uhhhh he kind of sailed through all that compared to Évike's mixed-faith struggles. There is no real parallel to be found.
I would have loved to see more of a crisis of faith for Gáspár explored, whether he kept it or not. I didn't like what did happen concerning faith with him because it was just like one sentence and I was disappointed.
Évike, on the other hand had such a wonderful character arc. She got to explore the religions of both of her parents and I really enjoyed the conclusion she came to about everything. Though most of her personality is frustrating.

I know I made a joke about it earlier, but in the end I enjoyed the fraught relationship between the leads.
I myself also had a fraught relationship with their relationship. Évike was annoying around the middle of their travel section and her thoughts about the dude were just—I didn't wanna hear about them anymore! If anyone ever needed to be sent to horny jail it's her, MY GOD. She would not shut up about how horny she was over this dude jfc.
And Gáspár was so damn reticent about his feelings I wondered if he even had a personality hidden under that eyepatch of his for most of the book. But there were some spicy, and some cute moments. It's "enemies to lovers" but in a juvenile way. Like "oh, you're so mad I gave you cooties." And Évike falls for Gáspár way too fast 🚓

While I did like the threading through the story concerning the magic/religions I thought that the last 70-100 pages were the most engaging when it came to what there was of the main plot. (I love sibling rivalries a lot too so that was fun.)

Overall, I got what I wanted out of this book. Enemies to lovers, folklore, brutality, and tenderness. Could it have been better? Absolutely! I wish it had been 100% engaging rather than floundering around every chapter. But I can't say I didn't enjoy it for what it is. I'm interested in the kinds of themes this book starts to lay down and I definitely enjoyed digging into those morsels. But the book as a whole was not cohesive in quality. It wants to have this complex theme and dark tone, but the characters, plots, and writing style are not developed to that complex level at all.
But I liked the magic and the conclusion of the religion theme.