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Palaces of the Crow
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.
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.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published May 19, 2026
About the author
Ray Nayler
94 books1,313 followersHugo and Locus Award winning author Ray Nayler was born in Quebec and raised in California. He lived and worked abroad for two decades in Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and in Vietnam.
Ray's Locus Award winning first novel was The Mountain in the Sea, which was also a finalist for the Nebula, the Arthur C. Clarke, and the Los Angeles Times' Ray Bradbury Awards.
Ray's novella The Tusks of Extinction won the 2025 Hugo Award, and was also a Nebula and Locus Award finalist.
His third book, the cybernetic political thriller Where the Axe is Buried, was published in April of 2025.
Ray most recently served as international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and as visiting scholar at the George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.
Ray lives in Washington, DC with his wife Anna, their daughter Lydia, and two rescued cats.
Ray's Locus Award winning first novel was The Mountain in the Sea, which was also a finalist for the Nebula, the Arthur C. Clarke, and the Los Angeles Times' Ray Bradbury Awards.
Ray's novella The Tusks of Extinction won the 2025 Hugo Award, and was also a Nebula and Locus Award finalist.
His third book, the cybernetic political thriller Where the Axe is Buried, was published in April of 2025.
Ray most recently served as international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and as visiting scholar at the George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy.
Ray lives in Washington, DC with his wife Anna, their daughter Lydia, and two rescued cats.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 352 reviews
June 2, 2026
Still a man, but last night I dreamed I was a scrap of the night sky, flying above the trees, and below me was a map of the world no human eyes had ever seen. pg. 227
In June of 1941, Neriya follows a crow into the Lithuanian forest. She’s played with the crow, which she’s named Buster Keaton, since she was seven years old. Over the years, Buster has mastered the games Neriya devises, making her think him the most intelligent of the numerous hooded crows inhabiting the forest. Neriya spends summers in the shtetl, “little town” (predominantly Jewish), and the remainder of the year, she lives with her parents in Vilnius. Her father is a doctor, and her mother is his assistant. Today is Sunday, and while her parents are sleeping, Neriya follows Buster. When the sounds of booming warfare come from close by, Buster flies in Keriya’s face to prevent her from leaving the forest.
Czeslaw alters his birth certificate to show that he’s four years older than his actual fourteen, so that he can join the Soviet army. His Polish family has lived in exile in Siberia, where Czeslaw’s father and grandfather taught him how to survive and hunt in the Taiga. When men came into the logging camp and took his father and grandfather away, that is when Czeslaw joined the army. His skill with guns impressed the recruiters enough to ignore his youth.
When Kezia, along with her Roma family, awakens one morning to six Germans surrounding them with rifles. For a while, Kezia lives on honey that she steals from bee hives. After some time, she discovers an abandoned boy wandering the streets of a village. The boy is mute; he latches onto Kezia.
The four young people find their way to one another and form their own kind of family. Among them is one photograph of Neriya with her mother and father. They display it in their underground hut, and it becomes a symbol of family and connection for all of them.
This is the second book I’ve read by Ray Nayler. The first one was The Mountain in the Sea. In both books, animals figure in extraordinary ways. Crows in this one and octopuses in ‘The Mountain in the Sea.’ Crows are depicted here as empathetic, intelligent, and community-minded helpers. They are depicted as working collaboratively when most of the humans around them are hell-bent on destroying one another. It’s a jarring juxtaposition.
The people in Lithuania were caught between the pincher arms of two totalitarian regimes. In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed the country, and then in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded. In 1944-1945, the Soviet Union again occupied the country. It’s difficult to imagine how horrible the conditions must have been, or what the people had to do to survive during this time. Nayler places the four young people in this story in the forests near Vilnius where 70,000 Jews and 30,000 others were murdered between June and December 1941, their corpses buried in mass graves, when there was a burial at all.
In this story, there are two main timelines: the 1940s and the 1970s. In the 1970s, we discover who of the four survives and the cost to them. It’s a heartbreaking and necessary story. Necessary because more than ever, we need stories about diversity and how narrow our lives become when leaders work to eradicate it. Ethnic nationalism, no matter the brand, seems to promote one way of living, one way of thinking, one race above all others. This story becomes even more poignant when the crows attain a rich connection with these young humans, showing how collaboration enhances not just survival, but daily life and can add humor and empathy to an existence that is flat and eroded without it.
The last section of the book is called Mutual Aid. The thinking behind the concept comes from Pyotr Kropotkin, a Russian philosopher, who says:
The war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.
Nayler places his story of collaboration in an environment that is dominated by fear and war, an environment that made it extremely difficult for trust to exist, much less thrive. Is it only our young that can carry this message of hope for humanity? I believe the young need a little help.
In June of 1941, Neriya follows a crow into the Lithuanian forest. She’s played with the crow, which she’s named Buster Keaton, since she was seven years old. Over the years, Buster has mastered the games Neriya devises, making her think him the most intelligent of the numerous hooded crows inhabiting the forest. Neriya spends summers in the shtetl, “little town” (predominantly Jewish), and the remainder of the year, she lives with her parents in Vilnius. Her father is a doctor, and her mother is his assistant. Today is Sunday, and while her parents are sleeping, Neriya follows Buster. When the sounds of booming warfare come from close by, Buster flies in Keriya’s face to prevent her from leaving the forest.
Czeslaw alters his birth certificate to show that he’s four years older than his actual fourteen, so that he can join the Soviet army. His Polish family has lived in exile in Siberia, where Czeslaw’s father and grandfather taught him how to survive and hunt in the Taiga. When men came into the logging camp and took his father and grandfather away, that is when Czeslaw joined the army. His skill with guns impressed the recruiters enough to ignore his youth.
When Kezia, along with her Roma family, awakens one morning to six Germans surrounding them with rifles. For a while, Kezia lives on honey that she steals from bee hives. After some time, she discovers an abandoned boy wandering the streets of a village. The boy is mute; he latches onto Kezia.
The four young people find their way to one another and form their own kind of family. Among them is one photograph of Neriya with her mother and father. They display it in their underground hut, and it becomes a symbol of family and connection for all of them.
This is the second book I’ve read by Ray Nayler. The first one was The Mountain in the Sea. In both books, animals figure in extraordinary ways. Crows in this one and octopuses in ‘The Mountain in the Sea.’ Crows are depicted here as empathetic, intelligent, and community-minded helpers. They are depicted as working collaboratively when most of the humans around them are hell-bent on destroying one another. It’s a jarring juxtaposition.
The people in Lithuania were caught between the pincher arms of two totalitarian regimes. In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed the country, and then in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded. In 1944-1945, the Soviet Union again occupied the country. It’s difficult to imagine how horrible the conditions must have been, or what the people had to do to survive during this time. Nayler places the four young people in this story in the forests near Vilnius where 70,000 Jews and 30,000 others were murdered between June and December 1941, their corpses buried in mass graves, when there was a burial at all.
In this story, there are two main timelines: the 1940s and the 1970s. In the 1970s, we discover who of the four survives and the cost to them. It’s a heartbreaking and necessary story. Necessary because more than ever, we need stories about diversity and how narrow our lives become when leaders work to eradicate it. Ethnic nationalism, no matter the brand, seems to promote one way of living, one way of thinking, one race above all others. This story becomes even more poignant when the crows attain a rich connection with these young humans, showing how collaboration enhances not just survival, but daily life and can add humor and empathy to an existence that is flat and eroded without it.
The last section of the book is called Mutual Aid. The thinking behind the concept comes from Pyotr Kropotkin, a Russian philosopher, who says:
The war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.
Nayler places his story of collaboration in an environment that is dominated by fear and war, an environment that made it extremely difficult for trust to exist, much less thrive. Is it only our young that can carry this message of hope for humanity? I believe the young need a little help.
May 23, 2026
Ray Nayler just keeps getting better.
Set in the early days of the Nazi invasion of Russia, the action occurs in the Soviet satellite state of Lithuania. Four children (mostly teen, one younger) are scattered by the war and end up hiding together in a forest, where they are befriended and protected by crows.
That sounds like a simple premise. It's not. The way the crows are introduced makes it plausible that something like this would happen; this could barely be considered a fantasy, it really doesn't read like one, but more like historical fiction. Each of the characters are unique and well developed: Czeslaw the teen soldier who lost his Russian unit; Neriya the Jewish girl whose entire village was destroyed while she was in the woods; Kezia the Roma girl who saw her family shot; and The Boy, mute and the only living person in a village the others come upon.
Is it possible for children to survive for years in the forest while hiding from soldiers and partisan patrols? Czeslaw has a rifle so he can hunt, and they teach each other all that they can to survive. Meanwhile, the crows provide lookout and warning to keep them safe.
Nayler uses his foreign service experience and knowledge of the complexity of warfare to show why the children feared all groups, not just Nazis. Different groups would shoot at each other regardless of affiliation, all just looking to survive and gain an advantage (even just a pair of good boots).
There are some very hard parts of this book, but it is ultimately a hopeful one due to the sense that people will come together in difficult times, and the lessons taught to one another will help us all survive. There is not a happy ending for everyone, but the ending feels earned. Well done.
Set in the early days of the Nazi invasion of Russia, the action occurs in the Soviet satellite state of Lithuania. Four children (mostly teen, one younger) are scattered by the war and end up hiding together in a forest, where they are befriended and protected by crows.
That sounds like a simple premise. It's not. The way the crows are introduced makes it plausible that something like this would happen; this could barely be considered a fantasy, it really doesn't read like one, but more like historical fiction. Each of the characters are unique and well developed: Czeslaw the teen soldier who lost his Russian unit; Neriya the Jewish girl whose entire village was destroyed while she was in the woods; Kezia the Roma girl who saw her family shot; and The Boy, mute and the only living person in a village the others come upon.
Is it possible for children to survive for years in the forest while hiding from soldiers and partisan patrols? Czeslaw has a rifle so he can hunt, and they teach each other all that they can to survive. Meanwhile, the crows provide lookout and warning to keep them safe.
Nayler uses his foreign service experience and knowledge of the complexity of warfare to show why the children feared all groups, not just Nazis. Different groups would shoot at each other regardless of affiliation, all just looking to survive and gain an advantage (even just a pair of good boots).
There are some very hard parts of this book, but it is ultimately a hopeful one due to the sense that people will come together in difficult times, and the lessons taught to one another will help us all survive. There is not a happy ending for everyone, but the ending feels earned. Well done.
May 21, 2026
Goodness. Well, this was phenomenal. It feels like I've read a number of outstanding books grappling with war and humanity recently, but it turns out they haven't really been all that recent: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed was March of 2024 and I read the stunning The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden at the end of 2023. They both just stand out in my mind so starkly that it feels like I must have read them more recently. (There's also little specific overlap, beyond the fact that war novels done well can be very powerful indeed, and when done poorly, for cheap emotional punches, I'm all the more disappointed in them for failing to live up to the heft of their subject matter.)
The Warm Hands of Ghosts is set in WWI, Siege of Burning Grass takes place in a completely fictional war and world, and Palaces of the Crow takes place in WWII. I went into this book totally blind, having loved some short stories by Ray Nayler and willing to just trust him to take me somewhere interesting. (And how!) I'll get into some detail, keeping spoiler-free, but for what it's worth, I think my experience of the book was better for not having read any reviews or even the book's blurb before diving in. If you'd like to do that too, I'd recommend stopping here.
If you aren't up for that, then here goes: in the book you meet 4 kids who find each other and try to survive and keep from starving to death before the nebulous, undetermined "when all this is over" comes to pass. You and I, being from the future, know roughly when and how WWII wound down, but none of our protagonists do. They only know that the world has gone absolutely insane, that no institutions or people can be relied upon, and they have no idea when that will change. There is a shattered landscape of shattered people who, even if they had their selfhood still intact, wouldn't be able to muster much in the way of sympathy for anyone who has lost everything, because everyone as far as the eye can see has lost everything and is carrying unspeakable personal grief and burdens. Often guilt, too.
Our protagonists are 14 and under, though this is absolutely not a YA book.
Czeslaw is Polish, his family forced into labor in Siberian forests, and he lied about his age to join the Red Army. He's the only surviving member of his unit. Neriya loves biology and her parents are doctors (her father is a doctor, her mother is effectively a doctor in all but title)--her family is Jewish and she's befriended some crows who live near the shtetl her family spends summers in, and they seem just... a few degrees different? from other crows. Some similar behavior types to those we associate with corvids--recognizing and remembering individual humans, offering gifts, a talent for puzzle-solving and games--but just a bit uncanny, a bit turned up to 11. Kezia is Romani and being followed by an abandoned unnamed little boy who doesn't speak. All have already suffered terrible, senseless losses by the time they find each other.
For those for whom this matters, this book struck me as less fantasy than as magical realism. There are fantastical elements, but they just *are*--and they're eclipsed by the realities of the war. If you desperately want to know why these crows are different or what their story is, well. You will get to learn a little more about who they are now, but not how they got this way. Acceptance of the other as an other on their own terms, rather than as a fulfillment of our expectations or projections, is a theme here. So is the importance of memory and stories to honoring those we lose. So is kindness as a self-perpetuating cultural meme that can echo down through years and generations.
Even when Nayler didn't do things with this story and these characters that I wanted him to do: have characters we care about emerge from the war, or emerge unscathed, or become adults that we the readers could have uncomplicated feelings about, it was still always the right thing to do for the story.
Throughout Palaces of the Crow, there are references to and excerpts from a work called Autobiography of a Burned Village. I am a sucker for references in fiction to fictional works (even if they are thinly-veiled allusions to, or fictional analogs of, a real work); it's up there with footnotes as just a personal dopamine done-deal. So, needless to say, I loved them. These excerpts were, without exception, poignant and evocative.
I received an ARC of Macmillan Audio's audiobook edition of this book, narrated by Eunice Wong. Gosh, does a talented actor / narrator make all difference in the reader's experience of an audiobook. And she is MARVELOUS. Her tone, her inflection, the cadence of her speech*--all pitch-perfect. I always knew who was speaking based on how individual the characters' speech patterns sounded. She brought the perfect tone and speed to every scene.
I love this book. Love it. I will be getting a deadtree copy for my shelves. (I keep thinking that reviewing advance copies of books will let me buy fewer of them, but that's not how it turns out.) Palaces of the Crow is heavy, and it should be. There's no other way to write about war unless you're making propaganda. But it has hope and human (and inter-species!) connection in it too, and I loved the elements that felt like mythic fiction--all of that served to keep it in the realm of "heavy" rather than crossing into "bleak."
If you're thinking you don't have much stomach for heavy anything these days, so did I. This is complicated but it's also beautiful and so sublime, trust me. It's worth it.
Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advance copy--my opinions are my own.
*Not to mention her pronunciation of a number of words in several different languages--just nailed it. Spot on.
The Warm Hands of Ghosts is set in WWI, Siege of Burning Grass takes place in a completely fictional war and world, and Palaces of the Crow takes place in WWII. I went into this book totally blind, having loved some short stories by Ray Nayler and willing to just trust him to take me somewhere interesting. (And how!) I'll get into some detail, keeping spoiler-free, but for what it's worth, I think my experience of the book was better for not having read any reviews or even the book's blurb before diving in. If you'd like to do that too, I'd recommend stopping here.
If you aren't up for that, then here goes: in the book you meet 4 kids who find each other and try to survive and keep from starving to death before the nebulous, undetermined "when all this is over" comes to pass. You and I, being from the future, know roughly when and how WWII wound down, but none of our protagonists do. They only know that the world has gone absolutely insane, that no institutions or people can be relied upon, and they have no idea when that will change. There is a shattered landscape of shattered people who, even if they had their selfhood still intact, wouldn't be able to muster much in the way of sympathy for anyone who has lost everything, because everyone as far as the eye can see has lost everything and is carrying unspeakable personal grief and burdens. Often guilt, too.
Our protagonists are 14 and under, though this is absolutely not a YA book.
Czeslaw is Polish, his family forced into labor in Siberian forests, and he lied about his age to join the Red Army. He's the only surviving member of his unit. Neriya loves biology and her parents are doctors (her father is a doctor, her mother is effectively a doctor in all but title)--her family is Jewish and she's befriended some crows who live near the shtetl her family spends summers in, and they seem just... a few degrees different? from other crows. Some similar behavior types to those we associate with corvids--recognizing and remembering individual humans, offering gifts, a talent for puzzle-solving and games--but just a bit uncanny, a bit turned up to 11. Kezia is Romani and being followed by an abandoned unnamed little boy who doesn't speak. All have already suffered terrible, senseless losses by the time they find each other.
For those for whom this matters, this book struck me as less fantasy than as magical realism. There are fantastical elements, but they just *are*--and they're eclipsed by the realities of the war. If you desperately want to know why these crows are different or what their story is, well. You will get to learn a little more about who they are now, but not how they got this way. Acceptance of the other as an other on their own terms, rather than as a fulfillment of our expectations or projections, is a theme here. So is the importance of memory and stories to honoring those we lose. So is kindness as a self-perpetuating cultural meme that can echo down through years and generations.
Even when Nayler didn't do things with this story and these characters that I wanted him to do: have characters we care about emerge from the war, or emerge unscathed, or become adults that we the readers could have uncomplicated feelings about, it was still always the right thing to do for the story.
Throughout Palaces of the Crow, there are references to and excerpts from a work called Autobiography of a Burned Village. I am a sucker for references in fiction to fictional works (even if they are thinly-veiled allusions to, or fictional analogs of, a real work); it's up there with footnotes as just a personal dopamine done-deal. So, needless to say, I loved them. These excerpts were, without exception, poignant and evocative.
I received an ARC of Macmillan Audio's audiobook edition of this book, narrated by Eunice Wong. Gosh, does a talented actor / narrator make all difference in the reader's experience of an audiobook. And she is MARVELOUS. Her tone, her inflection, the cadence of her speech*--all pitch-perfect. I always knew who was speaking based on how individual the characters' speech patterns sounded. She brought the perfect tone and speed to every scene.
I love this book. Love it. I will be getting a deadtree copy for my shelves. (I keep thinking that reviewing advance copies of books will let me buy fewer of them, but that's not how it turns out.) Palaces of the Crow is heavy, and it should be. There's no other way to write about war unless you're making propaganda. But it has hope and human (and inter-species!) connection in it too, and I loved the elements that felt like mythic fiction--all of that served to keep it in the realm of "heavy" rather than crossing into "bleak."
If you're thinking you don't have much stomach for heavy anything these days, so did I. This is complicated but it's also beautiful and so sublime, trust me. It's worth it.
Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advance copy--my opinions are my own.
*Not to mention her pronunciation of a number of words in several different languages--just nailed it. Spot on.
August 17, 2026
Quietly powerful, determined, and contemplative, this story explores the damaged peripheries of what it means to be human during inhuman times. This is poignant historical fiction that focuses on a few characters to tell a much bigger story, and it is rich and impactful. The world-building, from the despair of unintelligible violence to the intimacy of found family, from the burning of villages and the destroying of generations of lives and the caring for a neighbor’s child who is ill, everything is intimately portrayed, vivid and fully genuinely felt. You feel like you are in these places, with these people (and these crows), and it is simple and direct while feeling robust and complete. The four young characters we follow are heartbreaking in their presence on the page. There is nothing performative or merely surface level about any of the characters, everyone feels like they have been ripped from a diary or memoir, captured in real moments between mortar shells.
The writing feels like Nayler’s most sophisticated writing to date. Unlike his previous novels and novella there is no future technology to contend with here, nothing of awe and spectacle. In many ways this means he has stripped himself bare, and the usual eruption of humanity from the tenacious borders of the natural world with the technological world is not available to him here. There is an intense emotionality to the writing, not quite a nostalgia but a tone that addresses the hidden, inner realities, suggesting that books contain stories that elude the words on the pages. While the bulk of the narrative takes place in the early 1940s he starts, in the second part, introducing brief flashbacks at the top of each chapter, which lets us get more complete pictures of the characters and their lives, and then in the latter two books each chapter begins with a flash-forward to 1971, making our timeline as fractured and nonlinear as the war has left our characters lives. His movement across time is very smartly done, and it builds emotional tension in ways that never feel manipulative but do repeatedly keep you invested. The story reads really quickly as a result and is hard to put down.
I don’t think there is anything novel about saying war is chaos and does nothing but destroy. Within that chaos, which is never depicted as anything but uncaring and brutal, Nayler carves a space for survival. A place where humans can find themselves supported by a natural order of things, an effortless kindness they discover in themselves against all odds, inspired by the natural world around them as well as the ancestors and communities that raised them, that still live with and through them. This isn’t a story about hope but one that says hope does exist, even in the darkest of times. It is about community, caring, relationships, communication, and what it looks like to offer yourself to others. Desperation and loneliness live hand-in-hand with strength and courage. Not everyone survives war, or even survives the chaos of everyday reality, whether in literal wartime or not. Many whose bodies survive are left without minds intact, or, even more disparaging, hearts twisted and broken beyond seeming repair. This story doesn’t gloss over the very real violences of war, of grief and loss and unknowing. But it also reminds us that humans are made of more than that, too. Even wounded, even battered and broken, we can care for each other. We can survive together, if we are there to hold up our comrades when they have no strength left to stand, embrace them when they have no tears left to weep. We survive in and through each other, by giving ourselves, our hearts, our dedication, completely, to the care of those around us. In that service there is a natural immortality, something that lives deeper and beyond us, something wild and free and more powerful than chaos or destruction can ever be.
(Rounded from 4.5)
The writing feels like Nayler’s most sophisticated writing to date. Unlike his previous novels and novella there is no future technology to contend with here, nothing of awe and spectacle. In many ways this means he has stripped himself bare, and the usual eruption of humanity from the tenacious borders of the natural world with the technological world is not available to him here. There is an intense emotionality to the writing, not quite a nostalgia but a tone that addresses the hidden, inner realities, suggesting that books contain stories that elude the words on the pages. While the bulk of the narrative takes place in the early 1940s he starts, in the second part, introducing brief flashbacks at the top of each chapter, which lets us get more complete pictures of the characters and their lives, and then in the latter two books each chapter begins with a flash-forward to 1971, making our timeline as fractured and nonlinear as the war has left our characters lives. His movement across time is very smartly done, and it builds emotional tension in ways that never feel manipulative but do repeatedly keep you invested. The story reads really quickly as a result and is hard to put down.
I don’t think there is anything novel about saying war is chaos and does nothing but destroy. Within that chaos, which is never depicted as anything but uncaring and brutal, Nayler carves a space for survival. A place where humans can find themselves supported by a natural order of things, an effortless kindness they discover in themselves against all odds, inspired by the natural world around them as well as the ancestors and communities that raised them, that still live with and through them. This isn’t a story about hope but one that says hope does exist, even in the darkest of times. It is about community, caring, relationships, communication, and what it looks like to offer yourself to others. Desperation and loneliness live hand-in-hand with strength and courage. Not everyone survives war, or even survives the chaos of everyday reality, whether in literal wartime or not. Many whose bodies survive are left without minds intact, or, even more disparaging, hearts twisted and broken beyond seeming repair. This story doesn’t gloss over the very real violences of war, of grief and loss and unknowing. But it also reminds us that humans are made of more than that, too. Even wounded, even battered and broken, we can care for each other. We can survive together, if we are there to hold up our comrades when they have no strength left to stand, embrace them when they have no tears left to weep. We survive in and through each other, by giving ourselves, our hearts, our dedication, completely, to the care of those around us. In that service there is a natural immortality, something that lives deeper and beyond us, something wild and free and more powerful than chaos or destruction can ever be.
(Rounded from 4.5)
September 12, 2026
Saw the cover in my FLIBS and hey, I like crows and ravens and want more fantasy especially with crows and ravens, although this book is not fantasy but historical fiction, but maybe the actions of the crows are kind of magical? Anyway, my public library carried it and here we are.
I rarely read realistic fiction. I mean, booooorrrring, right? But I'm glad I went slightly off my usual track because I learned a bit about parts of the world during World War II that I never had cause to think about before, thanks to my comfortable sheltered life. Here we read of a Jewish girl, a Romani girl, and a Polish boy soldier passing as a slightly older Russian, all hiding in the forest from not just Nazis but Bolsheviks and Lithuanians and other political and ethnic groups who all want to kill each other, and sometimes just individuals who kill to improve their own odds of survival. They are sometimes assisted by some particularly smart-for-crows crows. The story moves around in time and character POVs. It could have gotten maudlin, especially while integrating the crows, but it stayed rooted and historically and scientifically valid, as far as I can tell.
It's shorter than its page count, thanks to copious white space around chapter divisions.
(FLIBS = Friendly Local Independent Book Shop. Only the cool kids know this one.)
I rarely read realistic fiction. I mean, booooorrrring, right? But I'm glad I went slightly off my usual track because I learned a bit about parts of the world during World War II that I never had cause to think about before, thanks to my comfortable sheltered life. Here we read of a Jewish girl, a Romani girl, and a Polish boy soldier passing as a slightly older Russian, all hiding in the forest from not just Nazis but Bolsheviks and Lithuanians and other political and ethnic groups who all want to kill each other, and sometimes just individuals who kill to improve their own odds of survival. They are sometimes assisted by some particularly smart-for-crows crows. The story moves around in time and character POVs. It could have gotten maudlin, especially while integrating the crows, but it stayed rooted and historically and scientifically valid, as far as I can tell.
It's shorter than its page count, thanks to copious white space around chapter divisions.
(FLIBS = Friendly Local Independent Book Shop. Only the cool kids know this one.)
May 23, 2026
WSJ review, by Sam Sacks: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/book...
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Excerpt:
“It is a war of everyone against everyone,” Mr. Nayler writes. “But especially of the strong against the weak.” Yet the crows offer a saving contrast to the Darwinian competition. At one point Neriya and her companions are ushered into the sanctum sanctorum of a corvid roost, where thousands if not millions of crows coexist in sophisticated collaboration. For carrion birds, war is a time of plenty, and Neriya senses that her adoption by the crows is a sort of refinement indulged in a thriving colony. She feels cared for in the way that people care for pets."
Nayler has become one of my favorite writers. This one is a venture into the uncanny valley: "The novel presents an extraordinary alien intelligence that happens to make its home here on Earth."
I read this and liked it pretty well. But the historical background is so awful that it was hard for me to get past that. The crow stuff is well done. For me, a weak 3-star read. But note that most other readers liked this more. Worth a try to see if it works for you.
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Excerpt:
“It is a war of everyone against everyone,” Mr. Nayler writes. “But especially of the strong against the weak.” Yet the crows offer a saving contrast to the Darwinian competition. At one point Neriya and her companions are ushered into the sanctum sanctorum of a corvid roost, where thousands if not millions of crows coexist in sophisticated collaboration. For carrion birds, war is a time of plenty, and Neriya senses that her adoption by the crows is a sort of refinement indulged in a thriving colony. She feels cared for in the way that people care for pets."
Nayler has become one of my favorite writers. This one is a venture into the uncanny valley: "The novel presents an extraordinary alien intelligence that happens to make its home here on Earth."
I read this and liked it pretty well. But the historical background is so awful that it was hard for me to get past that. The crow stuff is well done. For me, a weak 3-star read. But note that most other readers liked this more. Worth a try to see if it works for you.
June 10, 2026
The author writes wonderful prose- not always happy, but always driving home imagery, emotion, and human nature.
I was shocked and horrified at times, and appreciated that the story takes on difficult settings and topics.
I think I was expecting more of a supernatural story, and was a bit disappointed that the synopsis painted a bit of a different picture than the reality. I’ve seen other reviewers state it’s more magical realism, and I guess I agree with that description.
Both books I’ve read by Nayler focus on the dynamics between humans and animals. Really love the interactions between species detailed on the pages.
I did struggle with the audiobook aspect- the different timelines and POVs were confusing to follow.
Thank you to the author, narrator, NetGalley, and Macmillan Audio for a copy!
I was shocked and horrified at times, and appreciated that the story takes on difficult settings and topics.
I think I was expecting more of a supernatural story, and was a bit disappointed that the synopsis painted a bit of a different picture than the reality. I’ve seen other reviewers state it’s more magical realism, and I guess I agree with that description.
Both books I’ve read by Nayler focus on the dynamics between humans and animals. Really love the interactions between species detailed on the pages.
I did struggle with the audiobook aspect- the different timelines and POVs were confusing to follow.
Thank you to the author, narrator, NetGalley, and Macmillan Audio for a copy!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Palaces of the Crow
By Ray Nayler
Pub Date: May 19 2026
This is a historical fiction taking place during World War II. Four children from different walks of life are lead into a forest and kept safe from nazis surrounding them. The protectors are that lead them to safety is a group of crows. There is a found family theme here. I enjoyed this this book. It was different and with that kept my interest. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book early in return for my honest review.
By Ray Nayler
Pub Date: May 19 2026
This is a historical fiction taking place during World War II. Four children from different walks of life are lead into a forest and kept safe from nazis surrounding them. The protectors are that lead them to safety is a group of crows. There is a found family theme here. I enjoyed this this book. It was different and with that kept my interest. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book early in return for my honest review.
September 2, 2026
Nayler is an author I’ve found reliably thoughtful, interesting and original even if I can’t say that any of his previous novels have ever entirely worked for me (characterization issues or an inability to stick the landing, mostly – the danger of asking interesting and original questions in your books is you then have to try and answer them). Which is still a track record that makes anything new of his something of a priority read for me, and I’ve had a hold on this since my library put an order in for it back in June. My only regret is that I didn’t get to it faster – though it’s only barely science fiction, in terms of craft and execution this is easily Nayler’s best work. Not to mention one of the best and most emotionally affecting things that I’ve read all year.
While it jumps back and forth across the decades, the book’s narrative is centred in the forests of Lithuania during the early 1940s (a less than auspicious place to be). It follows a ragtag group of four young teenagers, all of them alone after fleeing or hiding from the massacre of their former communities by the Nazi war machine or its collaborators. It is not exactly hard to find oneself marked for death in that time and place even before the desperate hunger of winter sets in, but each of them is especially damned for one reason or another (Jewish, Roma, Red Army soldier, mute and possibly mentally ill) and so, after being thrown together by chance, they have no one to rely upon but each other. Each other, and the strangely intelligent crows that had been visiting, playing with, and exchanging gifts for food with one of their number for years before the war and then intervened to herd her away from the soldiers marching to her shtetl. With the crows, each other, and a great deal of luck they spend years hiding in the endless Baltic forests, marking and bonding them in ways that no amount of time or distance after the war will ever erase.
Nayler has, so far as I’m aware, not published any longform work that isn’t science fiction, but doesn’t really consider himself a science fiction author. Which is on the one hand insufferably precious of him, and not a stance that’s often (in my experience) found among authors who write actually good science fiction. But I can be charitable and understand what he means in this case – all his previous works have been set in the future and concerned themselves with futuristic technology and how it will change humanity and the world around it, but all of them have been much more in conversation with science or history than the tropes and traditions of the genre and similar works (rather to the story’s detriment in Mountain in the Sea, though more or less working in Where the Axe is Buried and (especially) Tusks of Extinction). Palaces of the Crow takes this to a new extreme, which is to say it’s really only science fiction for lack of any better label to hang it under. You could call it alternate history in a certain esoteric sense (alternate biology?), or just historical fiction with a big asterisk after ‘historical’. In any event, while the crows are pivotal to the book’s plot and thematically indispensable you can kind of forget about them for large sections of the narrative, in which case the story really does just seem like (very good, if often harrowing) historical fiction.
The narrative doesn’t really dwell on any particular atrocity, nor do any of its characters get close to the machinery of the Holocaust itself. Nonetheless, this is a story about living through an apocalypse. Not that the book is particularly shy about how awful living in Eastern Europe in the 20th century up to that point often was already (and at a few points everything is framed as the culmination of a process that began with the traumas of WW1), but from the perspective of the protagonists a whole civilization died in the 1940s, as much from its constituent parts turning upon each other and eagerly aiding in the slaughter as from the slaughter inflicted by foreign bayonets. What’s rebuilt after might be very impressive and modern, might even in many ways be better, but it’s not a continuation or evolution of what came before in any real sense. The symbolism of the flames jumping from a synagogue to consume the homes of the pogromists just as eagerly is hardly subtle, but it did stick in my head.
I can’t say how much this is just me bringing the Soviet history I’ve been reading this year with me and how much is intended by the text, but the time spent in the 1970s plotline on the politics of memory and the construction of history felt very apropos to the setting. The alienation faced by survivors struggling to see themselves or their experiences reflected in the official mythology now trumpeted from every rooftop, and the disillusionment that set in as it became clear that all the horror and hardship was not some cleansing, redemptive struggle which would win utopia but just years of misery which left traumatized survivors rebuilding among ruins and the dead, were both very well done.
I can’t say the book is about what it means to be human because, after all, the greatest positive examples are a civilization of decidedly inhuman (and un-humanized) crows. So instead I’ll say it’s about civilization, in the sense of the one apocryphal Margaret Mead quote. To live a worthwhile life means to some extent living on behalf of others, of working harder than you might and taking risks you wouldn’t for no reason but to help someone else. They might do the same for you – hopefully they will, and on balance it likely works out on selfish metrics in the end – but it cannot be done as a result of mercenary calculation or only for those who you know can pay you back. Civilization requires kindness, and the dedication and the ability to cooperate that results from it. To be wholly alone, to see others as nothing but resources and threats, is a short road to monstrosity.
None of which is exactly ground-breakingly original, and in most contexts I’d likely find it didactic or saccharine. The particular historical setting, and the clear portrayal of the risks and costs involved as resources grow scarce and the world grows ever-more dangerous, does a lot of work here. The folksy wisdom of someone saying that the truly terrible werewolves are not wolves becoming men but men becoming wolves lands much better when the story goes on to use the man saying it as an example of exactly how it might happen.
The characterization is likewise not especially original (you could write a fairly formulaic YA novel with the same cast and basic conceit, probably), but incredibly well-executed. Enough for the book’s climax to punch me in the gut like very little does these days. If the premise (knowing that the acknowledgements at the end include special thanks to several historians and scholars of corvid intelligence) sounds even slightly interesting, I can’t recommend this enough.
While it jumps back and forth across the decades, the book’s narrative is centred in the forests of Lithuania during the early 1940s (a less than auspicious place to be). It follows a ragtag group of four young teenagers, all of them alone after fleeing or hiding from the massacre of their former communities by the Nazi war machine or its collaborators. It is not exactly hard to find oneself marked for death in that time and place even before the desperate hunger of winter sets in, but each of them is especially damned for one reason or another (Jewish, Roma, Red Army soldier, mute and possibly mentally ill) and so, after being thrown together by chance, they have no one to rely upon but each other. Each other, and the strangely intelligent crows that had been visiting, playing with, and exchanging gifts for food with one of their number for years before the war and then intervened to herd her away from the soldiers marching to her shtetl. With the crows, each other, and a great deal of luck they spend years hiding in the endless Baltic forests, marking and bonding them in ways that no amount of time or distance after the war will ever erase.
Nayler has, so far as I’m aware, not published any longform work that isn’t science fiction, but doesn’t really consider himself a science fiction author. Which is on the one hand insufferably precious of him, and not a stance that’s often (in my experience) found among authors who write actually good science fiction. But I can be charitable and understand what he means in this case – all his previous works have been set in the future and concerned themselves with futuristic technology and how it will change humanity and the world around it, but all of them have been much more in conversation with science or history than the tropes and traditions of the genre and similar works (rather to the story’s detriment in Mountain in the Sea, though more or less working in Where the Axe is Buried and (especially) Tusks of Extinction). Palaces of the Crow takes this to a new extreme, which is to say it’s really only science fiction for lack of any better label to hang it under. You could call it alternate history in a certain esoteric sense (alternate biology?), or just historical fiction with a big asterisk after ‘historical’. In any event, while the crows are pivotal to the book’s plot and thematically indispensable you can kind of forget about them for large sections of the narrative, in which case the story really does just seem like (very good, if often harrowing) historical fiction.
The narrative doesn’t really dwell on any particular atrocity, nor do any of its characters get close to the machinery of the Holocaust itself. Nonetheless, this is a story about living through an apocalypse. Not that the book is particularly shy about how awful living in Eastern Europe in the 20th century up to that point often was already (and at a few points everything is framed as the culmination of a process that began with the traumas of WW1), but from the perspective of the protagonists a whole civilization died in the 1940s, as much from its constituent parts turning upon each other and eagerly aiding in the slaughter as from the slaughter inflicted by foreign bayonets. What’s rebuilt after might be very impressive and modern, might even in many ways be better, but it’s not a continuation or evolution of what came before in any real sense. The symbolism of the flames jumping from a synagogue to consume the homes of the pogromists just as eagerly is hardly subtle, but it did stick in my head.
I can’t say how much this is just me bringing the Soviet history I’ve been reading this year with me and how much is intended by the text, but the time spent in the 1970s plotline on the politics of memory and the construction of history felt very apropos to the setting. The alienation faced by survivors struggling to see themselves or their experiences reflected in the official mythology now trumpeted from every rooftop, and the disillusionment that set in as it became clear that all the horror and hardship was not some cleansing, redemptive struggle which would win utopia but just years of misery which left traumatized survivors rebuilding among ruins and the dead, were both very well done.
I can’t say the book is about what it means to be human because, after all, the greatest positive examples are a civilization of decidedly inhuman (and un-humanized) crows. So instead I’ll say it’s about civilization, in the sense of the one apocryphal Margaret Mead quote. To live a worthwhile life means to some extent living on behalf of others, of working harder than you might and taking risks you wouldn’t for no reason but to help someone else. They might do the same for you – hopefully they will, and on balance it likely works out on selfish metrics in the end – but it cannot be done as a result of mercenary calculation or only for those who you know can pay you back. Civilization requires kindness, and the dedication and the ability to cooperate that results from it. To be wholly alone, to see others as nothing but resources and threats, is a short road to monstrosity.
None of which is exactly ground-breakingly original, and in most contexts I’d likely find it didactic or saccharine. The particular historical setting, and the clear portrayal of the risks and costs involved as resources grow scarce and the world grows ever-more dangerous, does a lot of work here. The folksy wisdom of someone saying that the truly terrible werewolves are not wolves becoming men but men becoming wolves lands much better when the story goes on to use the man saying it as an example of exactly how it might happen.
The characterization is likewise not especially original (you could write a fairly formulaic YA novel with the same cast and basic conceit, probably), but incredibly well-executed. Enough for the book’s climax to punch me in the gut like very little does these days. If the premise (knowing that the acknowledgements at the end include special thanks to several historians and scholars of corvid intelligence) sounds even slightly interesting, I can’t recommend this enough.
July 31, 2026
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an ALC.
This was a very nice historical fiction novel with a unique set of characters. It wasn't what I expected though. I was expecting a lot more of the crows and more context to the story apart from just warning them and bringing them gifts. It didn't feel like the crows/speculative elements played an active part in the story. But that said, I liked the rest of the story by itself. The friendship between the four of them was quite well written. I also wasn't expecting that reveal at the end when they met up after the war. That was actually a very nice touch, in general showing the aftermath years later as well. As they say, when you've been through some messed up stuff together, your friendship is the strongest it can ever be. This book really was a testament to that. There were a lot of sad and dark parts in this book, expected of a book set during WWII. The characters were well written though. I would recommend this to anyone looking for WWII fiction.
The narration was well done. The emotions were portrayed very well, with a good, consistent pacing. It definitely improved my reading experience.
This was a very nice historical fiction novel with a unique set of characters. It wasn't what I expected though. I was expecting a lot more of the crows and more context to the story apart from just warning them and bringing them gifts. It didn't feel like the crows/speculative elements played an active part in the story. But that said, I liked the rest of the story by itself. The friendship between the four of them was quite well written. I also wasn't expecting that reveal at the end when they met up after the war. That was actually a very nice touch, in general showing the aftermath years later as well. As they say, when you've been through some messed up stuff together, your friendship is the strongest it can ever be. This book really was a testament to that. There were a lot of sad and dark parts in this book, expected of a book set during WWII. The characters were well written though. I would recommend this to anyone looking for WWII fiction.
The narration was well done. The emotions were portrayed very well, with a good, consistent pacing. It definitely improved my reading experience.
June 7, 2026
4.5/5 ⭐
Palaces of the Crow isn't my typical book, but I absolutely loved it. The storytelling and writing are exceptional. Nayler has written young teen protagonists in a way that is convincing and compelling, placing them in a truly horrific setting of WWII Lithuania. The bonds built among the children, their time in the forest, and their relationship with the crows made this book unique and beautiful.
Ultimately, a story of hope and the bonds of friendship and found family during unimaginable circumstances.
Palaces of the Crow isn't my typical book, but I absolutely loved it. The storytelling and writing are exceptional. Nayler has written young teen protagonists in a way that is convincing and compelling, placing them in a truly horrific setting of WWII Lithuania. The bonds built among the children, their time in the forest, and their relationship with the crows made this book unique and beautiful.
Ultimately, a story of hope and the bonds of friendship and found family during unimaginable circumstances.
July 16, 2026
Read this terrific and devastating book if you want:
-A narrative that will crack your heart into pieces, repeatedly, with its sympathetic, desperate main characters (Neriya a young Jewish girl whose village was destroyed; Kezia, a Roma whose family was slaughtered, and Czeslaw, an underage Polish soldier who deserted the Red Army), and the terrifying situations they found themselves in when the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941;
-Smart and very unusual crows with just a hint of the uncanny as the crows befriend and repeatedly keep the main characters safe from soldiers
-Another fantastic story by Ray Nayler.
I cried, felt the terror of its protagonists, I appreciated the complicated situation Nayler conveyed as rebels attempted to fight the Germans, but also committed terrible acts against their own. And innocents, such as the kids, who had to find a way to survive, somehow, evading all adults, no matter their affiliation.
I also appreciated the way Nayler moved us back and forth in time, each time giving us more story about the kids and the dangers they, and a mute boy who joins them, found themselves in, and the story's present, in the 1970s, when a scientist seeks the past and a way to atone for her guilt, reuniting with her fellow survivors, of which only two remain.
This is such a dark story; and even though I needed to keep walking away from it, I kept returning, held by the characters, and the way Nayler demonstrated the complexities and effects of nationalism, bigotry and revenge, and how they all come together to destroy the lives of many.
This is a poignant, at times crushingly sad story, but which also felt a little lighter at its end.
I loved how Nayler used the crows, and the connection they and the protagonists forge, showing how important and necessary collaboration and compassion are to not just exist, but to live.
Eunice Wong narrates and did a superb job at evoking my emotions, while also making me think about what Nayler was saying.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Macmillan Audio for this ARC in exchange for my review.
-A narrative that will crack your heart into pieces, repeatedly, with its sympathetic, desperate main characters (Neriya a young Jewish girl whose village was destroyed; Kezia, a Roma whose family was slaughtered, and Czeslaw, an underage Polish soldier who deserted the Red Army), and the terrifying situations they found themselves in when the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941;
-Smart and very unusual crows with just a hint of the uncanny as the crows befriend and repeatedly keep the main characters safe from soldiers
-Another fantastic story by Ray Nayler.
I cried, felt the terror of its protagonists, I appreciated the complicated situation Nayler conveyed as rebels attempted to fight the Germans, but also committed terrible acts against their own. And innocents, such as the kids, who had to find a way to survive, somehow, evading all adults, no matter their affiliation.
I also appreciated the way Nayler moved us back and forth in time, each time giving us more story about the kids and the dangers they, and a mute boy who joins them, found themselves in, and the story's present, in the 1970s, when a scientist seeks the past and a way to atone for her guilt, reuniting with her fellow survivors, of which only two remain.
This is such a dark story; and even though I needed to keep walking away from it, I kept returning, held by the characters, and the way Nayler demonstrated the complexities and effects of nationalism, bigotry and revenge, and how they all come together to destroy the lives of many.
This is a poignant, at times crushingly sad story, but which also felt a little lighter at its end.
I loved how Nayler used the crows, and the connection they and the protagonists forge, showing how important and necessary collaboration and compassion are to not just exist, but to live.
Eunice Wong narrates and did a superb job at evoking my emotions, while also making me think about what Nayler was saying.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Macmillan Audio for this ARC in exchange for my review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you to Netgalley and MCD for this ARC!
The foray into history was not what I expected from Ray Nayler, who's other works exist in the sphere of the distant future, but I hope it won't be his last. In Palaces of the Crow, we follow our four characters as they attempt to survive 1940s Lithuania in the woods, surrounded by desperate people who would kill them without hesitation, with the help of a community of crows.
Neriya, Czeslaw, Kezia, and The Boy find each other and in finding each other they find their will to survive. Neriya is Jewish at a time when that word alone is a death sentence in Eastern Europe. Czeslaw forged the year on his birth certificate to join the Red Army and barely escaped when his unit was ambushed. Kezia, a Roma girl with a "sickness" in her bloodline that she is terrified of, is escaping from the Soviets. And lastly, The Boy, the smallest and youngest, and mute, who has been left with no history or name by the world. The community they cultivated with each other can keep them safe as long as they stay sharp and aware of their surroundings.
Ray Nayler has captivated me before with the worlds he sees and creates, but his character work has really come a long way and he has hit his stride with this book. As the story unfolded, I was truly just along for the ride among all the twists and turns. Usually I am able to see where I'm being led by an author, but with Palaces I was blind to where I was being led until the moment Nayler decided I should know. And I really wanted to know, I couldn't put this book down.
I don't think this book will be for everyone, but the people who this book will be for... Once they find it, they will love it. I would recommend this to anyone who loves found family, nonlinear storytelling, survival through the worst of it, and if you have previously read and even marginally enjoyed any of Nayler's other works. Especially Tusks of Extinction.
I'm so thankful that I got to read this book before it's publication date (05/19/26) so I can tell everyone to read it.
The foray into history was not what I expected from Ray Nayler, who's other works exist in the sphere of the distant future, but I hope it won't be his last. In Palaces of the Crow, we follow our four characters as they attempt to survive 1940s Lithuania in the woods, surrounded by desperate people who would kill them without hesitation, with the help of a community of crows.
Neriya, Czeslaw, Kezia, and The Boy find each other and in finding each other they find their will to survive. Neriya is Jewish at a time when that word alone is a death sentence in Eastern Europe. Czeslaw forged the year on his birth certificate to join the Red Army and barely escaped when his unit was ambushed. Kezia, a Roma girl with a "sickness" in her bloodline that she is terrified of, is escaping from the Soviets. And lastly, The Boy, the smallest and youngest, and mute, who has been left with no history or name by the world. The community they cultivated with each other can keep them safe as long as they stay sharp and aware of their surroundings.
Ray Nayler has captivated me before with the worlds he sees and creates, but his character work has really come a long way and he has hit his stride with this book. As the story unfolded, I was truly just along for the ride among all the twists and turns. Usually I am able to see where I'm being led by an author, but with Palaces I was blind to where I was being led until the moment Nayler decided I should know. And I really wanted to know, I couldn't put this book down.
I don't think this book will be for everyone, but the people who this book will be for... Once they find it, they will love it. I would recommend this to anyone who loves found family, nonlinear storytelling, survival through the worst of it, and if you have previously read and even marginally enjoyed any of Nayler's other works. Especially Tusks of Extinction.
I'm so thankful that I got to read this book before it's publication date (05/19/26) so I can tell everyone to read it.
Review of advance copy
This is the second book by Ray Nayler that I've read, and while different, I haven't liked either of them. I just did not think this book worked on any level.
I can't fully put my finger on why I feel this way, but something about this story didn't really sit right with me. Set during WWII in the woods of the Soviet Union, the novel focuses on four young people brought together by a group of crows who protect them (and only them) from the horrors of war, genocide, and the worst aspects of human behavior. Why them? Only the crows know, and we never actually find out.
The novel shifts perspectives and voices (none of which are really all that distinct from one another) and timelines, causing the readers to always have to reorient themselves, all the while the language, texts within the text, and digressions or memories cause for a dizzying reading experience that seems more for the benefit and amusement of the author than for a satisfying experience for the audience. I also found that the book read like YA, which for me is not a good thing. It's possible to write a novel about young people but for adult audiences, but this is not a positive example of that.
The final result is a book I just did not like nor enjoy and I felt like I was slogging through it rather than appreciating the journey.
I can't fully put my finger on why I feel this way, but something about this story didn't really sit right with me. Set during WWII in the woods of the Soviet Union, the novel focuses on four young people brought together by a group of crows who protect them (and only them) from the horrors of war, genocide, and the worst aspects of human behavior. Why them? Only the crows know, and we never actually find out.
The novel shifts perspectives and voices (none of which are really all that distinct from one another) and timelines, causing the readers to always have to reorient themselves, all the while the language, texts within the text, and digressions or memories cause for a dizzying reading experience that seems more for the benefit and amusement of the author than for a satisfying experience for the audience. I also found that the book read like YA, which for me is not a good thing. It's possible to write a novel about young people but for adult audiences, but this is not a positive example of that.
The final result is a book I just did not like nor enjoy and I felt like I was slogging through it rather than appreciating the journey.
March 29, 2026
I love Nayler's writing--both his exploration of human and animal behaviors as well as his sparse prose. The only reason this isn't five stars for me personally is this novel is really leans historical fiction, not speculative. Crows truly are unbelievably smart and so this, combined with the story's historical setting, felt plausible compared to the sci fi premises of his other books. It's a fast, engaging (and heartbreaking) read.
~Thank you to the publisher for an advance reader copy ~
~Thank you to the publisher for an advance reader copy ~
May 17, 2026
Perfect historical fiction 👌
I loved the characters (human and crow) and the science/biology he weaved throughout the story. Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time.
I loved the characters (human and crow) and the science/biology he weaved throughout the story. Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time.
June 22, 2026
Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler tells the harrowing story about a group of young adults trying to survive in a Lithuanian forest during World War II. For those of you familiar with Nayler’s work, this novel showcases the same excellent quality and talent for writing as his previous stories. This time from Nayler, we get a historical fiction novel with speculative elements. I wouldn’t classify this as science fiction, but rather the overly broad speculative fiction label. The novel’s theme is centered around World War II, and the horrors and brutal reality it inflicted on not just the soldiers, but the communities of everyday citizens on the Eastern Front. The speculative elements come into play as Neriya, a young Jewish girl, befriends a flock of intelligent crows.
The crows are able to solve puzzles and play games with an aptitude beyond that of an ordinary crow. The crows bring Neriya gifts and alert her to danger, and they hold more surprises as the story progresses. Nayler has shown that he is interested in writing about animals, incorporating various species throughout his books, and always in a thoughtful and profound way. The crows in this novel add an incredibly interesting and unique element to a rather bleak story.
Most of the story follows this group of young adults, hiding and scavenging for food in a Lithuanian forest over the course of the war. They have to evade soldiers and bandits alike and witness some truly horrifying things.
Palaces of the Crow is a story about human conflict, friendship, the horrors of war, the meaning of life, and the adjacent animals that may benefit from humanity’s waste and destruction. Nayler never does reveal the motivation of the crows, but leaves us the readers to speculate and wonder. A recommended read to all readers. Ray Nayler continues to be a great author.
The crows are able to solve puzzles and play games with an aptitude beyond that of an ordinary crow. The crows bring Neriya gifts and alert her to danger, and they hold more surprises as the story progresses. Nayler has shown that he is interested in writing about animals, incorporating various species throughout his books, and always in a thoughtful and profound way. The crows in this novel add an incredibly interesting and unique element to a rather bleak story.
Most of the story follows this group of young adults, hiding and scavenging for food in a Lithuanian forest over the course of the war. They have to evade soldiers and bandits alike and witness some truly horrifying things.
Palaces of the Crow is a story about human conflict, friendship, the horrors of war, the meaning of life, and the adjacent animals that may benefit from humanity’s waste and destruction. Nayler never does reveal the motivation of the crows, but leaves us the readers to speculate and wonder. A recommended read to all readers. Ray Nayler continues to be a great author.
June 27, 2026
"Pretending to be happy for the sake of those around her, so that they would not be lonely and afraid. So that her own feelings would not infect them.
But was that true? Or had she made herself happy by pretending to be happy? Thinking back to that time, it was impossible to tell which was which.
All around her, others had seemed happy. But were they doing the same? Pretending to be happy for the sake of others?" (277)
But was that true? Or had she made herself happy by pretending to be happy? Thinking back to that time, it was impossible to tell which was which.
All around her, others had seemed happy. But were they doing the same? Pretending to be happy for the sake of others?" (277)
May 20, 2026
I’ve been a Nayler fan for a few years now, but this might be my new favorite. It hits many of the themes that he has returned to frequently, and the style of prose and characterization is familiar. But the historical setting marks a sharp departure from his previous two novels, and it makes for a story that feels more cohesive. There’s no musing on AI here, nor ways that society could unravel in the near future. Instead, it’s rooted in a particular time and place, one in which society has already pretty thoroughly unraveled, and is centered on three youths trying to keep both their bodies and their psyches intact in a world where anyone who finds them will more-than-likely want to kill them.
It’s still a speculative novel, and you could convincingly argue it as first contact in a similar vein to The Mountain in the Sea—though with corvids rather than cephalopods. But it feels like a historical novel *before* it is a speculative novel, and it’s tighter both in the cast and thematic focus.
The crows are great. But this is a novel about people: a pair of teenage girls, one Jewish and one Roma, and a Polish soldier cut off from the Red Army and likely to be shot as a deserter before he’d be welcomed back. There’s a lot of musing on how society has cut them off and created such horrifying conditions, tucked into bits of conversation and character backstory. But there’s just as much on the reasons to press forward and on the value of leaning on one another. The social commentary is on-point, but it’s so folded into the character struggles that it never feels preachy.
It’s hard to call this an uplifting book, as it is, after all, taking place amidst the Holocaust. Perhaps the best that can be done is bittersweet. But it does achieve bittersweetness. There are moments of heartbreak, but there are also things that are truly preserved. It doesn’t shy away from the horrors, but neither does it revel in them—it’s a book that’s always pushing beyond. Not towards a naive ideal future. But toward a future that the readers know as a past, that the readers know is deeply flawed, but in which they still find reasons to live.
I adored this book.
First impression: 19/20. Full review to come at www.tarvolon.com
It’s still a speculative novel, and you could convincingly argue it as first contact in a similar vein to The Mountain in the Sea—though with corvids rather than cephalopods. But it feels like a historical novel *before* it is a speculative novel, and it’s tighter both in the cast and thematic focus.
The crows are great. But this is a novel about people: a pair of teenage girls, one Jewish and one Roma, and a Polish soldier cut off from the Red Army and likely to be shot as a deserter before he’d be welcomed back. There’s a lot of musing on how society has cut them off and created such horrifying conditions, tucked into bits of conversation and character backstory. But there’s just as much on the reasons to press forward and on the value of leaning on one another. The social commentary is on-point, but it’s so folded into the character struggles that it never feels preachy.
It’s hard to call this an uplifting book, as it is, after all, taking place amidst the Holocaust. Perhaps the best that can be done is bittersweet. But it does achieve bittersweetness. There are moments of heartbreak, but there are also things that are truly preserved. It doesn’t shy away from the horrors, but neither does it revel in them—it’s a book that’s always pushing beyond. Not towards a naive ideal future. But toward a future that the readers know as a past, that the readers know is deeply flawed, but in which they still find reasons to live.
I adored this book.
First impression: 19/20. Full review to come at www.tarvolon.com
June 23, 2026
I am a huge fan of Naylor’s previous work, especially The Mountain In The Sea (2022), a meditation on the nature of consciousness, and an eco-logical call to arms, so I had been looking forward to the release of this new novel.
The Palace of The Crows has a similar message to previous books. It tells a story about the relationship formed between four young children and crows, as they fight for survival in Lithuania during WWII. Separated from their families at various locations they find each other with the help of the crows. After years of survival they are separated and eventually reunited. It is obvious a tremendous amount of research was done on the behavior of crows and also on the area where the story takes place.
It is a story of the nature of crows, the brutality of war, the meaning of reciprocity and the nature of gifts. The heart of the story is about our relationships with, and responsibilities to the animals who we live with and the damage we cause to their natural habitat.
I loved how the story was told from the different children’s perspective in a nonlinear fashion, pre and post WWII. I fell in love with the characters, the pacing was slow and steady leading to a heartfelt ending. 5/5 stars. I can’t wait for his next novel.
The Palace of The Crows has a similar message to previous books. It tells a story about the relationship formed between four young children and crows, as they fight for survival in Lithuania during WWII. Separated from their families at various locations they find each other with the help of the crows. After years of survival they are separated and eventually reunited. It is obvious a tremendous amount of research was done on the behavior of crows and also on the area where the story takes place.
It is a story of the nature of crows, the brutality of war, the meaning of reciprocity and the nature of gifts. The heart of the story is about our relationships with, and responsibilities to the animals who we live with and the damage we cause to their natural habitat.
I loved how the story was told from the different children’s perspective in a nonlinear fashion, pre and post WWII. I fell in love with the characters, the pacing was slow and steady leading to a heartfelt ending. 5/5 stars. I can’t wait for his next novel.
May 25, 2026
One of my anticipated new releases for this year. In Palaces of the Crow, four young people shelter deep in the Lithuanian forest during the worst of World War II. As war rages around them, they must depend on their own wilderness skills and the help of the curiously intelligent crows that live in the forest to survive.
Nayler has done the octopus book and the mammoth book to great effect, and in this novel, he moves on to the crow book. Unlike his previous novels, Palaces of the Crow has a solidly historical setting and doesn't venture far into the realm of the speculative, outside the slightly more intelligent crows. This book is also more interested in character interiority than Nayler's previous novels. Rather than broad concepts, it's focused tightly on four people's struggle to survive: Neriya, daughter of a Jewish doctor; Czeslaw, an underage soldier cut off from the Red Army; Kezia, a Roma girl who escaped the massacre of her family; and a young boy who can't speak. The setting is confined to one Lithuanian forest far from the broad historical sweep of death camps or armies. But the story is all the more vivid for the claustrophobia of the setting. All of our protagonists know that every faction that moves through the woods, from actual Nazis to the Red Army to Lithuanian peasants, would happily shoot them and leave them dead in an unmarked grave. And meanwhile, the harsh winters and increasingly scarce game can kill them just as easily...
A survival story of brutal clarity. I think the shift to more character focused historical fiction has served Nayler well. Here, the light SF elements serve to illustrate his thematic points about interconnectedness and survival, but do not become a major part of the plot. Recommended.
Nayler has done the octopus book and the mammoth book to great effect, and in this novel, he moves on to the crow book. Unlike his previous novels, Palaces of the Crow has a solidly historical setting and doesn't venture far into the realm of the speculative, outside the slightly more intelligent crows. This book is also more interested in character interiority than Nayler's previous novels. Rather than broad concepts, it's focused tightly on four people's struggle to survive: Neriya, daughter of a Jewish doctor; Czeslaw, an underage soldier cut off from the Red Army; Kezia, a Roma girl who escaped the massacre of her family; and a young boy who can't speak. The setting is confined to one Lithuanian forest far from the broad historical sweep of death camps or armies. But the story is all the more vivid for the claustrophobia of the setting. All of our protagonists know that every faction that moves through the woods, from actual Nazis to the Red Army to Lithuanian peasants, would happily shoot them and leave them dead in an unmarked grave. And meanwhile, the harsh winters and increasingly scarce game can kill them just as easily...
A survival story of brutal clarity. I think the shift to more character focused historical fiction has served Nayler well. Here, the light SF elements serve to illustrate his thematic points about interconnectedness and survival, but do not become a major part of the plot. Recommended.
June 6, 2026
Amazing in every way. One of if not my favorite read of the year so far.
July 27, 2026
I got an ARC of this audiobook.
DNFed around 50%
Nothing ever really seemed to happen. I couldn't tell one narrator from another, outside of the voice changes in the audiobook. None of the narrators really stood out, there was not a great deal of emotion in their voices that carried this story. Instead I was left often drifting in attention.
There really was not enough crow action to have the title it did.
It might work for someone else, but I have been trying for weeks to get through this one and it was just falling flat. I really wanted to like it.
DNFed around 50%
Nothing ever really seemed to happen. I couldn't tell one narrator from another, outside of the voice changes in the audiobook. None of the narrators really stood out, there was not a great deal of emotion in their voices that carried this story. Instead I was left often drifting in attention.
There really was not enough crow action to have the title it did.
It might work for someone else, but I have been trying for weeks to get through this one and it was just falling flat. I really wanted to like it.
August 11, 2026
“We are what is left over from what the war took from us” - p. 345
Wow. This was such a book. Not entirely what I was expecting, but it was quite good. It made me feel a range of emotions, from happy to heartbroken. Ray Nayler is an exquisite writer.
This book tells the history of WWII from an aspect I’ve never really seen before. I feel like we think of the world wars as these huge battles, such as trench warfare and the blitzkrieg, that are concentrated in cities, but they were more than that. They were also small individual fights all over rural Europe, made up of all these different groups of people. Some of whom were just doing their best to survive in the horrific landscape they found themselves in. And sometimes they were forced to make really difficult decisions in order to survive. And they had to live with those choices for the rest of their lives.
I really liked the relationships between the four main characters, though I do wish we’d gotten to see more of their day-to-day life/interactions. I also really liked chronological back and forth Ray Nayler did. It helped us understand who the characters were before we met them, and how they got to where they were in the beginning of the book. I also loved the crows. Honestly that was what caught my eye in the bookstore and part of what persuaded me to read this book
Wow. This was such a book. Not entirely what I was expecting, but it was quite good. It made me feel a range of emotions, from happy to heartbroken. Ray Nayler is an exquisite writer.
This book tells the history of WWII from an aspect I’ve never really seen before. I feel like we think of the world wars as these huge battles, such as trench warfare and the blitzkrieg, that are concentrated in cities, but they were more than that. They were also small individual fights all over rural Europe, made up of all these different groups of people. Some of whom were just doing their best to survive in the horrific landscape they found themselves in. And sometimes they were forced to make really difficult decisions in order to survive. And they had to live with those choices for the rest of their lives.
I really liked the relationships between the four main characters, though I do wish we’d gotten to see more of their day-to-day life/interactions. I also really liked chronological back and forth Ray Nayler did. It helped us understand who the characters were before we met them, and how they got to where they were in the beginning of the book. I also loved the crows. Honestly that was what caught my eye in the bookstore and part of what persuaded me to read this book
May 28, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ALC.
This was a great book. The various characters and their stories, the ways in which they had to navigate their situations, their bond, all of that was incredibly well written and presented to the reader. I also appreciated that the author was staying honest about the horrors of war but not mindlessly using those atrocities to shock the readers, especially considering this is based on a real war and a real genocide.
At times I was a bit confused with the timelines, as it seems to jump back and forth a bit and I personally found that if I don't pay close attention, I'll just miss that this is something that happens and get confused. I'm also, still, a bit confused about Neriya and Kezia, and who was actually narrating some parts of the book. I'm not sure if I just missed it, or if it was implied but not made explicit, but that part confuses me a bit.
I like that the story doesn't have a traditional happy ending, too, as that feels more real and respectful. No one involved in WW2 in any way had a happy ending that wasn't at least bittersweet, and there were certainly lots of complicated, still unresolved choices made, so representing that in this novel was also an aspect I liked.
The writing was great, definitely fit the mood of the story, and the narrator did a great job at narrating this audiobook.
This was a great book. The various characters and their stories, the ways in which they had to navigate their situations, their bond, all of that was incredibly well written and presented to the reader. I also appreciated that the author was staying honest about the horrors of war but not mindlessly using those atrocities to shock the readers, especially considering this is based on a real war and a real genocide.
At times I was a bit confused with the timelines, as it seems to jump back and forth a bit and I personally found that if I don't pay close attention, I'll just miss that this is something that happens and get confused. I'm also, still, a bit confused about Neriya and Kezia, and who was actually narrating some parts of the book. I'm not sure if I just missed it, or if it was implied but not made explicit, but that part confuses me a bit.
I like that the story doesn't have a traditional happy ending, too, as that feels more real and respectful. No one involved in WW2 in any way had a happy ending that wasn't at least bittersweet, and there were certainly lots of complicated, still unresolved choices made, so representing that in this novel was also an aspect I liked.
The writing was great, definitely fit the mood of the story, and the narrator did a great job at narrating this audiobook.
June 11, 2026
4.75 Ah, the magnificent power of stories. This is a book about many things but for me it felt like an achingly beautiful love poem to the magic and power of storytelling.
OK, there is so much more to this book; it's about mutual aid, active curiosity, the value of the world, community, family, etc... there is so much to love about the quiet, lyrical power of this book. Despite the often dark settings and subject matter it is full of beautiful, simple and achingly true observations, many of which resonated deeply and will stay with me.
It's the sort of book that, when you complete it, you close it and you sigh deeply. You pause... you don't want to poison the environment and place it's brought you. You want to carry the perceptions and beliefs of the characters into your world. Yeah, is that kind of book.
You really should consider reading. Not only is it beautifully written but the story is ingenious. I wanted to read the book again once I reached the very satisfying ending. I'm certain I'll return to this again in the future. When I'm looking to be comforted and find solace and a silver lining in the grey skies and trouble on the streets of cities.
-----------
Recently I finished six months working on a humanitarian project and upon completion I realized that it was difficult to find a word to describe my relationship and feelings for the people I had been through it with - and then I read this and my confusion made sense.
"Friend. Family. Those are modern words made for a modern world. For civilization, which really meant a word carved out of nature like a little dollhouse. An artificial world, with the natural painted and papered away, where each person lived in their own decorated box of a room. Where distance from one another was possible and true relationships fell away."
Yeah, of course I felt the way I did. This book helped me appreciate and process my struggle to find words to describe our relationship.
There was this beautiful description as well:
"That she carried, like all children did, her parents around inside her. That sometimes her parents spoke through her, in the voice and with the understanding of adults."
And this, "And once she could read everything she wanted, everything there was to read, she would be able to understand how it fit together. How the whole world fit together."
Spoiler? Not really, but you may want you save this for after you have read. I'm just putting furn another quote that I adored.
"I don't think we live for other other people," Czeslaw said. "I think we live as other people. We really are the people we care about. The people who went before us. We carry on for the dead, we protect the living, and we wait for a better world." Pg 374
OK, there is so much more to this book; it's about mutual aid, active curiosity, the value of the world, community, family, etc... there is so much to love about the quiet, lyrical power of this book. Despite the often dark settings and subject matter it is full of beautiful, simple and achingly true observations, many of which resonated deeply and will stay with me.
It's the sort of book that, when you complete it, you close it and you sigh deeply. You pause... you don't want to poison the environment and place it's brought you. You want to carry the perceptions and beliefs of the characters into your world. Yeah, is that kind of book.
You really should consider reading. Not only is it beautifully written but the story is ingenious. I wanted to read the book again once I reached the very satisfying ending. I'm certain I'll return to this again in the future. When I'm looking to be comforted and find solace and a silver lining in the grey skies and trouble on the streets of cities.
-----------
Recently I finished six months working on a humanitarian project and upon completion I realized that it was difficult to find a word to describe my relationship and feelings for the people I had been through it with - and then I read this and my confusion made sense.
"Friend. Family. Those are modern words made for a modern world. For civilization, which really meant a word carved out of nature like a little dollhouse. An artificial world, with the natural painted and papered away, where each person lived in their own decorated box of a room. Where distance from one another was possible and true relationships fell away."
Yeah, of course I felt the way I did. This book helped me appreciate and process my struggle to find words to describe our relationship.
There was this beautiful description as well:
"That she carried, like all children did, her parents around inside her. That sometimes her parents spoke through her, in the voice and with the understanding of adults."
And this, "And once she could read everything she wanted, everything there was to read, she would be able to understand how it fit together. How the whole world fit together."
Spoiler? Not really, but you may want you save this for after you have read. I'm just putting furn another quote that I adored.
"I don't think we live for other other people," Czeslaw said. "I think we live as other people. We really are the people we care about. The people who went before us. We carry on for the dead, we protect the living, and we wait for a better world." Pg 374
August 4, 2026
3.5 stars rounded up
Not your usual WWII story, this one focuses on 4 children caught up in the madness of war in the forests of Poland. Their survival depends on their loyalty to each other, their intelligence and strength as well as help from the crows of the forest who help them find shelter and warn of dangerous people who inhabit the forests.
It gets a little wordy in places and the ending seems to drag a bit, but I still enjoyed it. Full of the magic of the relationship between the characters and the crows as well as the brutality of war where everyone is the enemy, it's a tiny bit hopeful but incredibly sad as well.
Quote:
"That she carried, like all children did, her parents around inside her."
"The world would heal itself again. It had to!"
"That somehow a war, having torn everything to shreds, would result in a world that was better than the one before."
Not your usual WWII story, this one focuses on 4 children caught up in the madness of war in the forests of Poland. Their survival depends on their loyalty to each other, their intelligence and strength as well as help from the crows of the forest who help them find shelter and warn of dangerous people who inhabit the forests.
It gets a little wordy in places and the ending seems to drag a bit, but I still enjoyed it. Full of the magic of the relationship between the characters and the crows as well as the brutality of war where everyone is the enemy, it's a tiny bit hopeful but incredibly sad as well.
Quote:
"That she carried, like all children did, her parents around inside her."
"The world would heal itself again. It had to!"
"That somehow a war, having torn everything to shreds, would result in a world that was better than the one before."
August 15, 2026
4.5 I expected this book to involve crows extensively and it does. However, it is primarily a bleak, sad war story about 4 children surviving on their own in a Lithuanian forest for YEARS during WWII. Very well written but not action packed. It details how no one could be trusted during the war. There were many other horrible people who took advantage of the war to inflict terror and death on others then blame it on the Nazis. Told from the POV's of the children, it makes you appreciate so many of the things we take for granted every day. I loved the crows' participation and if you like crows, you will too. This is a heavy book so don't read it if you are dealing with challenges.
September 27, 2026
Somehow I didn't get quite the kick I expected out of this novel, considering the combination of World War II, the promise of folkloric elements, and Nayler's by-now trademarked interest in animal behavior. Why this is the case might come down to how stories that mirror contemporary atrocities have reached a certain level of diminishing returns for me. I don't need the shock of recognition, I may have been shocked to the point of being inured. Your mileage may differ.
Given the option I'd be more comfortable handing out 3.5 stars; though I might be the problem, not the book.
Given the option I'd be more comfortable handing out 3.5 stars; though I might be the problem, not the book.
July 12, 2026
devastatingly good.
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