This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Palaces of the Crow was released on May 19, 2026.

Ray Nayler wowed me a few years back with his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea. My last couple reads didn’t quite hit that level, but that didn’t stop me from being very excited to try Palaces of the Crow. And I think this may be his best one yet. 

Palaces of the Crow is a speculative novel—the titular crows have developed intelligence noticeably beyond actual crows—but it’s also a historical novel, and it’s the latter element that takes center stage. The heart of the book takes place in the forests of Lithuania during The Second World War, told in the first half of the book as the present storyline with occasional flashbacks to before the war and in the second half as memoirs written by one of the survivors decades later. The three primary perspective characters are teenagers separated from their people: a Jewish girl whose shtetl was burned, a Polish soldier who alone survived the defeat of his Red Army unit, and a Roma girl whose family was killed. Between the Red Army’s treatment of suspected deserters, their rank anti-Semitism, and the literal Holocaust being carried out by the opposing army, none of the three have high hopes for survival would they be found by anyone connected to the conflict. And so they must rely on each other—plus a fair helping of corvid aid—to preserve both their physical life and their sanity through the duration of the conflict. 

Nayler’s stories often focus on the way that big, sweeping geopolitical or technological changes affect ordinary people on the ground, so while Palaces of the Crow deals entirely with the geopolitical, its focus on three stragglers struggling for survival is very much in keeping with his style. His novels also tend to be fairly meditative, and that also is on full display here. There’s a lot of commentary on the ways societies move to exclude or oppress certain groups, as well as the ways that crises can make it easy to dehumanize others, or to struggle to hold onto one’s own humanity. One line that particularly stood out to me observed that:

Crimes that were unspeakable because of their horror became crimes that could not be spoken because the language to enunciate them had been destroyed.

But despite the setting, it’s not all doom and gloom. While the leads may have to work to find reasons to live, they develop genuine bonds through the course of the book, and building a case for mutual aid in the midst of crisis and rampant dehumanization is one of the major projects of the novel. While the main timeline may include a fair bit of hiding from people with guns and bad intentions, the fight for physical survival feels like less of a focus than the development of commitment to and affection for each other. This doesn’t have all the aesthetic trappings of a typical found family story, but finding family remains absolutely central to the narrative. It’s nearly impossible to survive being demonized and violently persecuted without forging bonds of care and support. 

And, because this isn’t purely historical fiction, those bonds need not be exclusively with other humans. It’s clear from the earliest chapters that the crows in these woods are exceptional, and while they don’t take center stage for most of the novel, the characters slowly learn more about their intelligence and social commitments, culminating in a meeting that feels a whole lot like first contact. But while that meeting includes enough details of corvid culture to make a compelling case for their sentience, first contact isn’t the primary function the crows serve. Instead, they underscore the theme of mutual aid. From the very beginning, the reader can see crows working to protect the main characters from those of ill intent. And over the course of the story, the characters slowly come to realize just how much they have been protected, and they begin to consider just what aid they owe in return—not as a trade for help, but in virtue of their relationships and status as sentient creatures. It’s the heart of the speculative subplot and indeed the heart of the entire novel. 

It’s impossible for a novel with this setting to be both honest and wholly optimistic. There’s no papering over the carnage left in the wake of the armies, the ordinary people treating their fellow humans as disposable, or the ways in which the end of the war failed to correct so many of these problems. But Palaces of the Crow threads the needle between optimism and despair, delivering something that’s hopeful while still being painfully honest about the difficulty of the path forward, both on personal and societal levels. No one comes through this ordeal without losing something, and even the survivors are plagued with doubts and psychological scars. And yet, their care and sacrifice for one another do bring a measure of healing and proof that something better is possible. 

We’re not yet halfway through the year, but Palaces of the Crow is easily my favorite 2026 release to date. It’s philosophically insightful and emotionally poignant, offering an honest look at a dark period in our history but with a focus on the sorts of bonds that bring people through such times. As historical fiction, it’s exceptional, and while the sci-fi plot may not be the main focus, it nevertheless provides a fascinating first contact plot that dovetails wonderfully with the major themes. Read this book. 

Recommended if you like: meditative novels, stories about the people on the margins in major conflicts, finding ways forward in horrifying circumstances, crows. 

Can I use it for Bingo? I’d argue it as hard mode for First Contact, and you could Judge a Book by Its Title. It’s also Published in 2026 and features Politics (though the characters generally do not have any influence in said politics) and Explorers or Rangers. 

Overall rating: 19 of Tar Vol’s 20. Five stars on Goodreads.