Angol
In the vein of Naomi Noviks New York Times bestseller
Spinning Silver and Katherine Ardens national bestseller The Bear
and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut inspired by Hungarian
history and Jewish mythologyfollows 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, vike is the only woman
without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The
villagers blame her corrupted bloodlineher 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 kings blood sacrifice, vike
is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.
But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en
route, slaughtering everyone but vike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they
have no choice but to rely on each other. Except hes no ordinary Woodsmanhes
the disgraced prince, Gspr Brny, whose father needs pagan magic to
consolidate his power. Gspr 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, Gspr understands
what its like to be an outcast, and he and vike 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 vike reconnects with her estranged father and
discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gspr need to decide whose side
theyre on, and what theyre willing to give up for a nation that never cared
for them at all.
