Lyrical, intense, and foreboding, this is a remarkable first novel. Set in the Dark Ages, it tells of a year in the life of a remote village, the labors of its inhabitants, their struggles and fleeting pleasures in the face of threatening forces that surround them. The forest dominates their lives-in it lurk the fierce riders who come to rob, kill, and rape, and from it they evoke a being, half-man, half-clay, for their defense.