Hugo and Locus Award winner Ray Nayler returns with a heart-wrenching speculative historical thriller
June, 1941. Four young teens are caught between the Nazis and the Red Army.
Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl. Czeslaw is an underage Polish soldier who has deserted the Red Army. Kezia is a Roma horse trader whose family is on the run from Soviet collectivisation. As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border, all three are caught up in the onslaught. Along with Innokentiy, an abandoned boy who cannot speak, they are driven into the primeval Lithuanian forest.
As the war rages, the threats of the forest emerge – not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, bandits and outcasts twisted by war. Survival will require forming an unbreakable bond with one another – and also with Neriya’s crows, no ordinary corvids, who guard a secret of their own deep in the trees.
June, 1941. Four young teens are caught between the Nazis and the Red Army.
Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl. Czeslaw is an underage Polish soldier who has deserted the Red Army. Kezia is a Roma horse trader whose family is on the run from Soviet collectivisation. As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border, all three are caught up in the onslaught. Along with Innokentiy, an abandoned boy who cannot speak, they are driven into the primeval Lithuanian forest.
As the war rages, the threats of the forest emerge – not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, bandits and outcasts twisted by war. Survival will require forming an unbreakable bond with one another – and also with Neriya’s crows, no ordinary corvids, who guard a secret of their own deep in the trees.
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Reviews
Nayler's twisting, turning political thriller has spectacular surprises, grounded by realistic, complex characters who are determined to change their world, however hopeless it may seem. A bold, epic SF story and an inspiring tale about taking down all forms of authoritarianism
Roll over, George Orwell: This post-apocalyptic dystopia makes Airstrip One look like a summer camp. Nayler's sophomore novel is set in a familiar future world in which totalitarian orders rule, with recognisably Putinesque touches in what's called the (né Russian) Federation, not least an autocratic ruler who's been running the show for decades . . . A richly detailed evocation of a grim future that is, sadly, absolutely believable
An intense, claustrophobic novel . . . a work of first-rate science fiction