The Maiden and Her Monster
A dark and enchanting fantasy tale rooted in myth
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- 85,00 kr
Publisher Description
The forest eats the girls who wander out after dark . . .
‘A dark, atmospheric and riveting debut, wreathed around a love story like no other’ – Samantha Shannon, author of the million-copy bestseller The Priory of the Orange Tree
Rooted in fairy tales, folklore, and sapphic romance, The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez is perfect for readers of Katherine Arden, Ava Reid and Naomi Novik.
As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the forest’s curse has plagued her village. But when the Ozmini Church comes to collect its tithe, they don’t listen to the warnings about a monster lurking in the trees. After a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes an impossible bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest: if she brings him the monster, he will spare her mother from execution.
Venturing into the blood-soaked woods, Malka finds a monster, albeit not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself if Malka will help to free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.
But a deal easily made is not easily kept. And as their bargain begins to unveil a much more sinister threat, protecting her people may force Malka to endanger the one person she left home to save – and to face her growing feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear.
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‘A dark and endlessly enchanting fairy tale’ – Ava Reid, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning
‘A gorgeous dark fantasy rendered in detail sharp as a tailor’s needle’ – S. T. Gibson, No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of A Dowry of Blood
‘A dark, poignant fairy tale about resilience, faith, and redemption’ – Allison Saft, the Sunday Times bestselling author of A Dark and Drowning Tide
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Debut author Martinez draws from Jewish folklore about the Golem of Prague to create a solid sapphic enemies-to-lovers romantasy marred by distractingly off-kilter prose. The forest by Malka's monster-plagued village is notorious for eating "the girls who wandered out after dark," but Malka's mother, the village healer, relies on the black perphona that grows there to make her medicines. When she's found in the forest gathering this plant, Malka's mother is blamed for the death of the forest's latest victim, and it's up to Malka to prove her innocence. She goes into the forest expecting to find a monster. Instead, she meets Nimrah, a golem magically bound to the forest, who may be the source of all the monsters terrorizing the village. Nimrah agrees to give herself up and free Malka's mother, if Malka will rescue Nimrah's creator from prison, a mission that requires Malka to use forbidden magic and become "rooted," or magically bound, to the golem. While the Ava Reid–esque mix of Jewish folklore, dark romance, and bloody horror will have its fans, many readers won't be able to get past Martinez's awkward prose style, which is littered with odd phraseology, malapropisms, and metaphors that range from belabored to nonsensical. This is a struggle.
