In The Maiden and her Monster, Maddie Martinez paints a vividly brutal picture of a country brought to its knees by corrupt religious zealots and the working class people trying to survive their iron grip. When Malka’s mother is accused of a murder she didn’t commit, Malka promises to find the real murderer: the golem hiding in the cursed woods on their doorstep, and bring it to justice instead. This quest quickly unearths truths that should have stayed buried and gives Malka much, much more than she bargained for. 

This story is set in a world similar to those found in works by Naomi Novik or Katherine Arden, and is framed by beautiful writing so similar I couldn’t help but feel like I had picked up the next book in a jointly-written series. Martinez is a gifted writer with a clear passion for the myth of The Golem of Prague on which her novel is based, and she takes liberties with it in order to inject the sapphic love story around which the main plot dances. While I am not familiar with the original myth, Martinez’s golem was not what I was expecting. Instead of a hulking beast of stone and clay, I was presented with a large woman with some stone body parts who absolutely nailed the grumpy love interest stereotype. With my own knowledge of the source material severely lacking, I drew comparisons to Justine in The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter: a strong, masculine woman whose isolation from society has deeply impacted their character. 

While depictions of golems vary in mythology, they usually have some sort of flaw to their character or obstacle to overcome to prevent them from being mistaken as fully human. Martinez’s golem lacked this and sat at the other end of the scale by coming off a little too much like a superhero: her slightly larger size was her only drawback and only in certain situations. In everything else she appeared to be a reluctant expert and she quickly overcame the one obstacle that was initially presented before the second act.

The real gem of this book was the attention to detail in Martinez’s worldbuilding and the effortless way that the culture seeped through the words on the page. Her writing was eloquent and deft with its descriptions and her magic system was based firmly in the myth of the golem’s creation: carved words and whispered orders. Never once did I waver in my understanding about how this world functioned or how the different cultures and factions of people interacted. 

This is definitely a book for the readers who love a story within a story. With religion and tradition being such strong themes within it, it made perfect sense for the characters to tell each other stories, to remind each other of fables and their lessons, to reflect those morals and parallels back at their own problems and learn from them. This was executed excellently and complimented Martinez’s rich worldbuilding. 

Unfortunately, while the concept of the magic system was an intriguing one, I felt it was missing too many boundaries and began to feel like a convenient wand to wave at pesky plot holes. The plot was ambitious and familiar in the traditional tropes that pieced it together, but the pacing was unbalanced and relied on convenient story beats to keep things moving.

Overall, this is an impressively detailed debut from Martinez and a must-read for fans of Jewish mythology or Eastern European worldbuilding in their fantasy novels. It’s not afraid to bare the cruel underbelly of a dictatorship built on arrogance and greed and pushes the characters to their limits. 

The Maiden and her Monster is available now – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org