Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman-he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. 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.īut 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. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline-her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods.
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. Release Date: June 8th 2021 (Harper Voyager)