Charlotte Kersten

So What’s It About?

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her 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, 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.

What I Thought

This year I read all of Reid’s currently published works so that I could write an essay about why her books bother me as much as they do. I am less personally frustrated by this one than the others because it doesn’t focus explicitly on the themes I care a lot about and am most frustrated by in her other books – namely sexual assault survivorhood and feminism. That being said, this was a pretty unpleasant read and I still don’t think it’s good by any means.

I struggled the most during the first half of the book, which sees protagonist Évike embark on a quest with the dour and easily-embarrassed woodsman Gáspár. This part of of the book basically never deviates from the following cycle of events: Évike says something deliberately nasty and cruel to Gáspár, who responds morosely; they are attacked by some kind of mythological forest creature; the attack somehow forces them into close physical proximity, intimacy or unintentional emotional bonding. Rinse and repeat until some random woman tells them that they aren’t going to be able to find the bird that they’re looking for. They’re like “Oh, okay,” and immediately give up and return to the capital city, where the book shifts into its second half and a new set of problems.

Specifically, very few character actions make sense once Évike gets to the capital – sometimes this is deliberate, as when she makes some blunders that only worsen her situation and starts to realize that she can’t always respond with headstrong violence. Otherwise, though, why does anyone do what they do?
-The king could use his magic to hurt her when she’s threatening him but doesn’t, and instead decides to use her as a bodyguard (which we never actually see her do)
-She agrees to his bargain despite knowing that he’s killed and betrayed all the other wolf-girls who have come before her
-The conniving prince Nandor tries to assassinate Évike but decides to leave her alive after gloating about all his secret plans to her, after which she is rapidly discovered and saved
-Gáspár and Évike decide that they have to GO BACK and find the bird, and they find it basically immediately
-The king eats the bird and immediately goes crazy
-Nandor waits to try to kill the king until AFTER he eats the bird, which is supposed to have made the king all-knowing and powerful
-Speaking of the bird, who knows about it and why hasn’t it been hunted or killed before if its power is so allegedly incredible and coveted?

I almost appreciate how much less emphasis Reid’s other books have on plot because all of this was inexplicably bad. Évike is also a frustrating character to spend time with because of how relentlessly miserable and impulsive and horrible she is to everyone around her, but at least in this instance I can say that Reid made the deliberate decision to write a Difficult Female Character who has been shaped by how she’s been treated and is somewhat reasonably changed by her experiences over the course of the book to be a bit more vulnerable and thoughtful. That being said, this kind of protagonist combined with the plot I just described, the one-note enemies-to-lovers dynamic with sad boring Gáspár, and some very repetitive writing (I sheathed my claws, anger pooled in my stomach, I remembered the sting of Viraig’s whip and the cruel taunting of Katalin’s words, wolf-girl, wolf-girl, WOLF-GIRL) just combined for such an irritating experience.

The exploration of inter-group tensions and religious intolerance felt somewhat strange to me inasmuch as the happy ending is that a Good Guy (her bf) is now the reigning monarch, he has people from different identity groups on his council, and Évike is no longer being abused/bullied by the people who abused/bullied her all her life. If I enjoyed anything, it was probably her developing relationship with her father, her learning about his religion, and the sprinkling of little folk tales throughout. Otherwise, I am not really sure what was going on here.