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 collectivisation. 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 must evade not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, and the other bandits and outcasts wandering the benighted landscape.
Survival requires forming an unbreakable bond with one another - and also with Neriya's intelligent crows, no ordinary corvids, who are guarding a magnificent secret of their own.
Palaces of the Crow is a dazzling work of speculative fiction, exploring survival, loyalty and the fraughtness of existing between worlds - from the master of the form, Ray Nayler.