Synopsis
‘A modern masterpiece. Blacktail will consume you’
– Marcus Kliewer, bestselling author of We Used to Live Here and The Caretaker
A visceral dark fantasy novel, Blacktail is the long-awaited second novel from Scott Hawkins, the critically acclaimed author of The Library at Mount Char.
Who does your dog pray to?
Blacktail is a half-breed wolf, born to hunt. When he finds love beyond a garden wall, he dares to imagine a peaceful life – until men butcher his mate and unborn pups in a surgical act of cruelty. His grief ignites a rampage of torn throats and shattered bone, a slaughter so absolute it draws the gaze of an ancient feline witch. She sends him south to wake the sleeping Forest God and end the age of reason.
Fuelled by a rage that frightens Hell itself, Blacktail wages war against men and the beasts who dare defend them. From a gore-soaked wilderness to a burning confrontation with Heaven, Blacktail is a feral odyssey of vengeance.
The Forest God sleeps. But what will be the price of waking him?
* * *
‘As glorious as it is gruesome’
– V. E. Schwab, Sunday Times bestselling author of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
‘Beautiful, brutal fantasy, red in tooth and claw’
– Chuck Wendig, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Staircase in the Woods
‘A magnificent, bloody saga that will change the way you look at the world’
– Nat Cassidy, bestselling author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Mary
Details
03 September 2026
9781037417184Reviews
Reader, be warned. This is not a gentle book, and those who cannot bear to see an animal hurt should guard their hearts. But persist, and you will be rewarded. Blacktail is as glorious as it is gruesome.
Wickedly sharp, unflinchingly brutal, and nothing short of a modern masterpiece. Blacktail will consume you
Mesmerizing and strange, like the headiest of folklore. Blacktail is one to savour; one to delight in the eccentricities of; one to sit with long after it ends
A mad, feral fable – this is beautiful, brutal fantasy, red in tooth and claw. Funny, heartbreaking, violent. All hail Blacktail. Down with the two-legs
