The Butcher of the Forest

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A world-weary woman races against the clock to rescue the children of a wrathful tyrant from a dangerous, otherworldly forest.

At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out.

No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for show more longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore.

So Veris will travel deep into the Elmever to face traps, riddles, and monsters at the behest of another monster. One misstep will cost everything.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Being one who really internalized the truism "No good deed goes unpunished" and its corollary "Never reveal how competent you are because then you will always get the job," I was all set to like this iteration of these aperçus. I am happy to say, nothing in the read convinced me otherwise.

Veris, whose shocking, likely unique ability to survive a trip into Elmever forest has landed her the unenviable and possibly lethal job of rescuing kids lost in there, is a good person. Her exploit in Elmever was not last year, or even last decade...she is solidly in her middle years now. She would also like to enter cronehood, thank you very much, and that might not happen unless she gets the stupid kids out of this haunted, evil forest. The stupid kids that belong to the local wicked overlord. The foreign, wicked overlord.

Of course this woman of middle years and possessed of close loving ties to her community of friends and family will drop everything and rush off to rescue this awful man's kids at risk of disappearing into the horrors she overcame before. You just need to ask!

And threaten everyone she loves with horrible deaths.

Thus are the stakes established. This is going to be a Quest with a difference in dramatis personae. Since Quests are about inner discovery through outer-world problem-solving, we are accustomed to seeing them feature young people. This time Verity, who has already solved the puzzle of surviving a day in accursed Elmever forest, must return to figure out the mystery of the place. The difference? A puzzle has one correct answer, a mystery has many possible solutions, varying shades of Rightness.

Part fairy tale with its lessons quietly taught, part adventure horror story with its body horror lightly sprinkled in, part cosmic horror with its universal stakes salted on...this novella packs a lot into its one-sitting length. Enough that it might repay breaking the read into two sessions.

While the ending fits with the story, and concludes the stakes satisfyingly, I do not think the usual audience for Quests will be all that pleased with this iteration of the storyverse because its stakes are...mutable. Veris faces down lots in this tight package. She makes her peace with the past, as all of us around her age must; she does the right thing by her lights, as we all hope to do in life; she learns that her life of answering puzzles and solving mysteries can not prepare her for anything to come except in habits of mind. The answers are, maddeningly, never the same.

Sound like my forties. Yours too, I wager. show less

I received an advance copy via NetGalley.

Butcher of the Forest isn't a tromp through your typical fairyland--no, it's a hardscrabble scramble through a nightmare. Veris is a middle-aged woman summoned to the court of the Tyrant, the man whose ruthless rule cost Veris the lives of her own parents and thousands more across the realm. He tasks her with an impossible quest into the nearby woods, where his two curious children have gone exploring, and where no one but Veris has returned. These woods are a place where undead animals hunger, games are deadly, and the food anchors people there forever. If Veris doesn't return with the Tyrant's children within the day, her own surviving family and friends will be slaughtered.

Hooo boy. This book show more is dark. Dark, dark, dark. Mohamed can sure write, as the prose is eloquent, the tension high, and the mission feels impossible. It's a novella, at least, so I wasn't kept in suspense through a never-ending tome. The end feels... right yet not right at the same time. show less

A bite-sized fantasy novella from Premee Mohamed, which fits smack-dab in the middle of my deep dive into her work. The Butcher of the Forest demonstrates Mohamed's range, swapping out her more usual anti-colonial cosmic horror for true medieval fantasy laced with unseelie menace and feudal tragedy. Yet in essence, The Butcher also depicts a dark children's fairy tale that I'd absolutely love to read with my godkids.

A twisty, dark and rotting romp through a fairy tale hellscape. Rich in atmosphere and feverish momentum this book has tremendous imagination. I loved the grisly body horror and eldrich woodland entities. It’s written beautifully with some amazing introspection dialogue. However I feel it might have been caught in its dreamy thoughts at times that took away from the immersion. But I will mention that I don’t feel like this ultimately takes away the overall experience and will boil down to personal preference. I’m instantly a fan of the writer and recommend to anyone looking for a dark horror fantasy read!

Now that I had a few days, I can now share a few thoughts about this novella. Firstly, the fact this author does so many writing panels online is the reason why I bought this book without even thinking for 5 seconds when I visited an airport bookstore. With so many books clamoring for a reader's attention, I bought several trad books in a whopping bookhaul with a prominent social media presence. I don't closely interact with any of the authors, maybe a like or an emoji every now and then. But I do recognize their names and felt very excited to see their books in the flesh.

And so, without knowing anything about this book, I bought a copy and let it stand on its own.

Did I like it?

Certainly! I enjoy dark fantasy quite a lot, and I was well show more aware the author loves entmology and all kinds of gruesome horror stuff. In this aspect, the book delivers exactly what I would have expected from this author's hobbies and personal interests. Readers that enjoyed the dinner scene in Pan's Labyrinth are going to love this book. I felt a strong inspiration from the haunted fairytale world in that film here intertwined with a strong Slavic fairytale influence.

I won't delve too much in the plot, just that basically the protagonist Veris is a woman in her late 30's (but the way she is written made me feel she was in reality in her late 50s). She lives in a land that is constantly being burned to ashes by ruthless conquerors, and has accepted the fact her parents died as a consequence of the nonstop raids. This aspect of the book reminded me of real history of Eastern Europe where the most prosperous cities would be depopulated from warfare and replaced by new people ad nauseum. In fact, the warlord king in this book reminded me so much of the insane king in Keith Ward's book: The Blood King. Readers that enjoyed this book's antagonist will certainly like that story!

Long story short, the king's two children have entered the very dangerous magical forest that humans are not supposed to visit and Veris is forced to risk her life or else the king will do the expected cowardly thing of burning her village to the ground. Easy peasy, right?

Now, here is where I have some issues with the book. The plot holes for starters. While it is indeed true the king is a foreigner that isn't entirely aware of the dangers of this forest, he comes from lands that know magic is real. He knew the risks, but never taught his children to avoid them. He has lived in these lands for at least 20 years, so it isn't like he never found out that the forest adjacent to his shiny new castle is dangerous. Since the book is entirely from Veris's POV, I will give the book leeway we don't know the full story. Maybe the king's two kids are truly assholes in the making and didn't care.

The second plot hole is one that was constantly driving me nuts the whole book. Veris repeats ad nauseum that you cannot say your true name in the cursed forest, because birds that spy on you can tell the sercet to the wrong person and they can control you. Getting some Spirited Away vibes here. Only that... the human characters say their names... at least 6 times. I was fully expecting there would be a consequence in the story for this... and... uhh... it's like everyone forgot this and left the plot hole. For a trad book that would have been revised dozens of times, it was quite a letdown because this was such an easy thing to fix.

Once we find out why the kids were stolen, the semi head honcho antagonist had the most underwhelming face-off ever. It isn't solely the fault of the writing, though. The author posesses a knack for beautiful lyrical prose describing the spookiness of the trees and how the dangerous forest folk smell like snowflakes with pine cones and whatnot. Sometimes, I think the author became so overly excited describing every tree in the forest that carries zero importance in the actual plot that stringalong sentences are... abundant. And I am not talking about puny 20 word slogs. Oh no, there is one sentence in this book that is a whopping 63 words long! Yes, 63! I will cease being so hard on indie books with 30 word long sentences from now on. If trad books can get away with 50 luggers, then it is only fair for indies to string endless sentences that never end thanks to the endless usage of em dashes and semicolons.

Setting aside the plot holes and stringalong sentences, there is a major issue I had with the book. And this isn't exactly a book problem, it is a me problem. Whenever I read a road trip story where the stakes are ridiculously high and everyone has 10 seconds to get from point A->B in the plot, I read ridiculously fast. Like, I just no longer care about the filler scenes where everyone falls from a cliff and get covered in heaps of mud while rain batters above. Because all I care about is finding out if they make it or don't make it out on time. And this is one thing I truly enjoyed about Pan's Labyrinth. By making the story very open-ended where you combine the hidden fantasy world and the historical fiction story, I had the chance to fully immerse myself in the magic aspects without feeling impatient.

And, I know, Spirited Away also has stakes where the female protagonist needs to save her parents that became enchanted by the antagonist before they get killed. But the stakes didn't feel too high. She just needed to get a job in the onsen and we spend half of the film watching her meet new friends and wondering what is with that handsome guy that transforms into a water dragon.

Readers that don't care too much if the characters escape the haunted forest on time won't feel the same impatience I did with this book. They will enjoy the filler extra challenge chapters where Veris gets a couple new injuries peppered with another 3 paragraphs describing the next weird spot in the haunted forest. Maybe have another chapter with imaginary fungi toilets or something.

Despite my impatience over the story pacing issues, I did enjoy the book a lot and am mainly basing my score on the plot holes and excessively long sentences.

Giving it 4.5 stars! show less

A monster who begat monsters, and I walk with them now; little tyrants.

I felt this started quite promisingly: a tyrant loses his children in magical woods from which no one ever returns; he comes to the one woman who ever entered the woods and returned with whoever was lost and demands she recovers his children. At first it's spooky and weird, but—and it feels weird to say this about a novella—it's too long. There's some interesting stuff in here but not enough compared to the length of the book. There's only so much "bargaining with spooky tricky wood creatures" I can find interesting.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley for this for review through NetGalley.

Thoughts: I enjoyed this, it's a well done dark fairy tale read. The story follows Veris, the only woman to enter the forbidden forest and return. When the tyrant ruler's children go missing, he forces Veris back into the forest to find them, else her family's life is forfeit.

I enjoyed the dark and twisting secrets of the forest which intersects with the fae realm. This has a very traditional dark fairy tale feel with it. Dangerous bargains are made and deals sealed in order for Veris to navigate the forest safely.

This ended up being a bit darker than I expected. Veris has some very dark secrets of her own in her past and these are show more unveiled as she tries to survive the forest.

The writing was easy to read and flowed well. There is some adventure and a lot of dark fae in here. I enjoyed Veris as a character and liked her resourcefulness. The story wraps up nicely with a bit of a mystery still unanswered at the end.

My Summary (4/5): Overall this was a quick read that I enjoyed. I think if you are a fan of traditional dark fairy tales you will enjoy this. It was engaging and well written and I look forward to future books the Mohamed writes. show less