The Wolf and His King: Deluxe Limited Edition

There's some real magic in this poignant and marvelous book. I've said it many times before and I'll say it again here: I'm a real sucker for a dream-like fairy tale vibe, and this has that in spades. Which on the surface is perhaps not surprising, considering we're talking about a retelling of a 12th century French folk tale. But it's the prose and the structure that deliver on the promise of something enchanted and enchanting. This is a beautifully well-written novel, with prose that is by turns ethereal and grounded, and somehow manages the swings between tones without either feeling jarring or underbaked. And the shifts in grammatical person between the POV characters is also handled with such deceptively easy mastery that it makes you wonder why more books don't attempt it - until you remember that in lesser hands, it would be a mess. Not so in Longman's. This is a book of longing and heartache and desire - not just in the romantic sense of wanting to know another, but in the personal and primal sense of wanting to know oneself. Now I get that a "who am I?!" motif is far from unique, but again, Longman's skill elevates it, gives it new texture and flavor. Your heart will break for these characters more than once. A shout out to the production design of the US-market hardcover, which is absolutely gorgeous. (Crossposted from my Storygraph review.)