The Woodcutter (original 2010; edition 2012)

An excellent blend of fairy tales, mythology and the best bloody bits of the Brothers Grimm melded together to create a new kind of magical fantasy. The tale has heart, soul and a workman-like hero who the reader roots for from the first page. A new fantasy classic. ( )

I'm giving this, I think perhaps generously, 3***.

One of the problems with tales of magic is that the magic can sometimes be used to excess -- to the extent that cause-and-effect becomes minimally necessary to the author with the result that plot can simply jump from one episode to another with little actual basis in causality. Combine this with fairy tales -- in which characters are largely archetypal -- and we have characters whose archetypicality makes them of little interest to us.

That's probably a good reason why so many fairy tales are short stories rather than full-length novels. In a short story, the magical weakening of cause-and-effect and the use of archetypal characters need not be a flaw because the magic and archetypicality combine to create a mythical, legendary effect -- an effect, though, which does not carry over throughout a longer piece of prose fiction.

Combining these flaws with a quest novel, in which causality can be so important, only aggravates the problem, and that seem to be the problem here. The only character of any real interest is The Woodcutter himself, and his oft-times magical invulnerability only fails in the conclusion of the novel, where he does at last acquire some real interest -- sufficient interest, I might add, to make the deus ex machina conclusion a bit more acceptable.

Fairy-tale retellings can work. A good example is Michael Buckley's The Sisters Grimm series, but Buckley's success derives mainly from the very realistic relationship between the two sisters, Daphne and Sabrina. Here, too much is centered upon The Woodcutter alone, especially after his wife has largely passed out of the story and the boy Jack has also largely disappeared. Without supporting characters of interest, everything turns on The Woodcutter and his quest, and here the excessive use of magic destroys any real tension in the character development throughout the eponymous hero's quest. ( )

The Woodcutter is a book that reminded me of quite a few other books.

It's a fairy tale so, of course, one cannot help but think of the Grimm Brothers. But the stories were changed just enough that I thought of McKinley, perhaps Rose Daughter or Spindle's End.

And, since it uses a dozen or so other fairy tales as source material, it reminds me of some of the old standbys that use that device such as Myers' Silverlock.

The mood in much of it has that slightly dreamy air of McKillip's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. The characters, especially the evil ones such at The Gentleman, occupy archetypal rather than individual roles, evoking Tepper's True Game, especially the first trilogy.

And the protagonist wouldn't have been out of place in a de Lint novel.

...and so on.

In a way, that sums up my feeling about this book. It was interesting and well-written, and the fundamental premise was original enough, and I found it engrossing and fun and I liked reading it…but it didn't quite seem to have a voice of its own. You read a McKillip or a de Lint or, yes, a Tolkien or a Kay…any of the time-tested who choose to walk through portions of Faërie…and you know whose book you're holding. Danley doesn't quite have that, yet.

It's not that she doesn't have it within her. There were moments, particularly when the main character is recollecting his wife, where I thought, "There's Danley's voice!" I'd like to see more of that. I think it can happen. It's why I'll buy her next book. ( )

This was a good effort by Kate Danley but similar ideas have been done before and so much more eloquently. Her writing style just didn't flow for me. For most of the book I kept feeling how much better it would have worked as a graphic novel, I think this was due to her disjointed writing technique and the short chapters. I did enjoy The Woodcutter but for me it's not a keeper. Recommended for fans of the darker side of fairy tales but I don't think it will please every fan of this genre. ( )

A gloriously weird amalgam of fairy tale bits. Feels a little like something by Sheri S. Tepper. ( )