Tuesdays with Ambrea: The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

 

 

Reviewed by Ambrea

 

In a village where everyone woman is born with a special kind of magic, Évike is born powerless.  Worse, she’s the mixed blood child of a village wolf-girl and a Yehuli traveler, making her an outcast and a target.  When the king’s soldiers—known simply as the Woodsmen—arrive in her village, Évike expects the same tragedy as always:  a wolf-girl will be chosen to be sacrificed to the king.  Except this year, Évike is betrayed by her own village and surrendered to the Woodsmen without a fight.

Évike fully expects to die.  No wolf-girl has ever escaped the clutches of the Woodsmen and their blood-thirsty king.  But when monsters attack the Woodsmen in the forest, killing everyone but Évike and the captain, she discovers she may yet find a way to survive.  Her quest will take her far beyond the bounds of the world she once knew and show her the very beating heart of magic.

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid hooked me with the discordantly bright cover and the intriguing premise.  It reminded me of all the old fairy tales—you know the ones, the stories with evil queens who cut out girls’ hearts and wolves that eat hapless travelers and red-hot dancing shoes and poisoned apples.  After reading the first few pages, I thought it had a lot of promise and I was excited to dive in; however, I eventually found myself disappointed by Reid’s novel.

The Wolf and the Woodsman is a bit of an odd duck.  I mean, it isn’t quite what I expected—not to say that it’s a bad story, rather, I think, it just wasn’t the story for me.  You see, I enjoyed the beautiful descriptions and the complex dynamics between characters and the magic.  I loved how the author was able to create such a lush story, filled with tiny details and carefully spun words to make the setting and the characters spring to life.  It’s vibrant and evocative and complicated. 

On the flipside, it’s also violent, bloody, grim, and grotesque.  Reid is merciless in her descriptions—all those lovingly selected words can paint a beautiful portrait, but it can also create a disturbing landscape that can make you ache.  Take her descriptions of the tundra, for example:  she crafts a beautiful picture filled with snowy pines and mountains capped with ice and flutters of snow, and then she describes the bitter cold and the ache of cold limbs, until you feel the ice down deep in your bones. 

Reid is a talented writer.  She also has an incredible skill for describing gore.  So much so, I found myself more than a little grossed out by the amount of sheer bloody violence depicted on the page.  More than once, I had to stop reading and put the book aside, because I felt a little green around the gills.  (You have been warned!) 

Besides the violence, I only had two real complaints:  I though the story seemed a little too long and disjointed; and, I really hated that the heroine seemed so ineffectual.  After a certain point, The Wolf and the Woodsman seems to drag, because it has too many twists and turns for me to properly enjoy it; likewise, I simply grew tired of seeing Évike being treated like the world’s punching bag. 

I also found myself disliking Évike, because she seemed to make the same mistakes over and over and over again.  Like, I can appreciate that Évike is bitter and vengeful and violent—she had to be, considering she’s powerless in a world where magical powers are valued above all else—but she’s also impulsive and injudicious.  She’s not cunning in her vengeance, she’s petty and imprudent.

I can get behind a character who won’t give up, who won’t bow to the cruelty of others, who snarls and snaps back at those who mistreat her; however, I don’t like characters who react for the sake of reacting, who don’t actually seem to learn anything—or, worse, don’t actually think through their decisions.  It’s frustrating to say the least.