In the vein of Naomi Novik's New York Times bestseller Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden's national bestseller The Bear and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debutâ inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythologyâfollows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart a tyrant.
In her forest-veiled pagan village, Ăvike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodlineâher father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king's blood sacrifice, Ăvike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.
But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Ăvike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he's no ordinary Woodsmanâhe's the disgraced prince, GĂĄspĂĄr BĂĄrĂĄny, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. GĂĄspĂĄr 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, GĂĄspĂĄr understands what it's like to be an outcast, and he and Ăvike 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 Ăvike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and GĂĄspĂĄr 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.
