Synopsis:
In Ray Nayler’s speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows with a magnificent secret of their own to protect
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 deserts the Red Army and runs into the freezing Lithuanian woods. Kezia is a Roma horse trader whose family is on the run from Soviet collectivization. As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border in June 1941, all three are caught up in the onslaught. Along with Innokentiy, an abandoned boy who cannot speak, they are driven into the primeval forest, where they survive by forming an unbreakable bond with one another—and with Neriya’s intelligent crows, who for years have been bringing her intricate gifts suggesting they are no ordinary corvids.
As the war goes on, the crows warn the children of danger and help them hide from the human threats of the forest—not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, and the other bandits and outcasts wandering the benighted landscape.
From the Ray Bradbury Prize and Arthur C. Clarke Award finalist, and Hugo and Locus Award winner, Ray Nayler, Palaces of the Crow blends history and haunting speculative wonder into a story of survival, loyalty and the fragile beauty of life in the darkest of times.
Review:
As a Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror book reviewer, it’s a little hard to categorize Ray Nayler’s latest book, Palaces of the Crow. It’s a work of historical fiction set primarily in Eastern Europe during the early 1940s, but there’s more to it. It comes from a place of speculative fiction, but the argument could be made that there’s very little here. The history and horror of World War II is on full display, while the characters grapple with the repercussions nearly 30 years later. The titular crows are special and perhaps sentient, but Nayler leaves enough to the imagination to not commit either way. Nayler defies us to pigeon-hole this book, and that’s okay with me — Palaces of the Crow is an excellent book that doesn’t need a specific classification.
There certainly is a horror component, but ultimately, whatever horror comes about in Palaces of the Crow is the terror and violence borne of war and hate. But Nayler doesn’t stop at the day the Allies finish sweeping through Europe. As we finally connect with each of the four main characters during what are simultaneously the worst and best years of their lives, Nayler throws in the curveball of flash-forward scenes from 1971 as we work to piece together a mystery we didn’t even know existed.
And that’s what makes this book special. Nayler’s prose takes our characters and expands them from simply caricatures of Jews or soldiers or Roma. They all have personalities and unique motivations. In fact, he uses our own expectations of how characters are supposed to work to throw in a razor-sharp knife twist as the book nears its end. Nayler was able to convince me it was the best way to end the book while simultaneously hating him for it.
The found family aspect was the heartbeat of the book and that shows in the adoption of the crows as well. And by adoption of the crows, I mean the crows adopting the humans. The crows that Neriya, Czeslaw, Kezia, and the boy (as he’s known during the war) encounter and befriend are their saviors in more ways than one. The crows warn them of danger, provide them with shelter, and keep their eyes open to goodness in the world. If there is a speculative fiction aspect, the crows are it, but Nayler doesn’t rely on them entirely.
In a very real way, Palaces of the Crow is a coming-of-age story as well, for each of the four leads. That loss of innocence happens quickly and violently as war overtakes their lands, but as they are thrown together into desperate circumstances they are forced to grow up in their own ways. Later we learn that growth may not have been perfect — the war and violence probably stunted natural growth — but they did what they needed to do to survive in the moment.
Palaces of the Crow continues something that Nayler has become a master of — taking animals (octopus in The Mountain in the Sea, elephants in The Tusks of Extinction) and using them to show us the worst and best of humanity. In this novel, the Germans and Russians are both threats to our characters for different reasons and death is a constant shadow lurking behind the next tree. Four teenagers living on their own in nature not knowing if their families are alive (or knowing they aren’t) and everything that comes with that… Yet… the crows are giving without expecting recompensation and show our four teens that there is good in the world.
Eunice Wong does an excellent narration, nailing the Russian, Polish, and other Eastern European pronunciation while providing emotion to the riveting story in some very key moments of the story. She’s narrated a few other Nayler works and it looks like the two have a great connection between author and narrator.
I was moved by Palaces of the Crow and found it a wonderful exploration of life and what it takes to survive while war wages all around you. I could keep talking about so many things with this book — there’s even a meta-quality to the whole thing as we find later that the 1940s portions are snippets of a book that one of the characters wrote later in life. But I have to stop at some point, so here it is — I highly recommend the novel no matter what genre you prefer to read.
Thank you to MCD for providing this book and for Macmillan Audio for providing this audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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