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 debut? inspired by
Hungarian history and Jewish mythology?follows 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 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.
