The Butcher of the Forest
by Premee Mohamed
2024
The Butcher of the Forest is a dark fantasy novella, a fairy tale so grim that it slides into horror. Author Premee Mohamed has delivered the literary equivalent of the filmmaker's 'tight ninety' - a book that is taut, lean, and well-edited, where every scene advances the story, and every bit of action feels 'right' and appropriate and inevitable. This book is both excellent and economical, and has a literary heft that belies its slim size and its clear, readable prose.
From the moment Veris is awoken in the night by armored guards who drag her, in her nightgown, to a carriage to see the Tyrant who rules her village and all the surrounding lands, you know that things are going to go badly for her. And when the Tyrant himself tells her that his two children have wandered out of the palace and disappeared into the Woods, a cursed forest that absolutely no one - except Veris - has ever returned from alive, when the Tyrant tells her to go back in, and to do the impossible by returning with his children, and to do it all in a day or he'll slaughter her entire village as punishment, when that happens you know this is not going to be a story with a happy ending. The only questions are what will go wrong, and how bad will the consequences be? I was fully prepared, for example, for Veris to be successful but too late, and to come home to a village burned to the ground.
The edge of the woods are safe, but inside the mortal woods are another, different, otherworldly woods, and there's no obvious barrier or way of knowing when you've crossed from one to the other ... except until after you've gone too far. There are beings that live in the woods, that are sort of like people, but also very, very strange. Mohamed hasn't written any elves or faeries, nothing so safe or recognizable. Nothing with a name, except the unicorn, who's the most monstrous thing in there.
More than anything else, Mohamed's treatment of magic and supernatural creatures reminds me of SM Wheeler's novel Sea Change, which isn't even a helpful comparison, because hardly anyone else has heard of it or read it. But what I mean is that all the creatures of the forest are weird, and powerful, and dangerous, and Veris and the kids, when she finds them, are achingly vulnerable, nearly helpless, except for what they can get by being polite, and clever, and quick. But if something from the forest catches you, and it has you by rights of you breaking a rule - no cutting wood, no spilling blood, all deals will be unfair, no cheating or arguing or else they become unfairer still - there's nothing you can do, no way to fight, no way to win by strength.
So, Veris enters the woods. Through trials and by her own wit and determination, she finds the kids, and through more trials and hardships she leads them back toward the edge of the forest, back to reality, and their home, the castle of the Tyrant, as the day wanes, and time runs out, and you know it won't be quite that easy or straightforward... Time maybe passes differently in the forest, but Mohamed skillfully takes from morning to afternoon through a long evening into the night, without ever stating the phase of the day, just with the mood and the colors and the light. It's just one of many impressive things about what she's written here.
Along the way, we learn a bit about Veris and her village, about the Tyrant, how he fights, how he wins and conquers, about what happened to Veris when he first arrived, and she was just a girl, and her parents were still living, about why she came into the cursed forest the first time, before she knew she'd become a legend by making it back out. There's not a lot of worldbuilding here, but as with everything else in this jewelbox of a book, there's the right amount, there's just enough. We learn just enough about the cruel logic of the woods and its denizens, see just enough adventure as Veris passes through, see just enough of flashbacks and of the wider world.
This is a good one. You might give it a miss, if you think it's too dark. But if you like this sort of fantasy, combining realistic politics of conquest with unsettling and uncanny glimpses of the supernatural, this is an easy and rewarding pick.
From the moment Veris is awoken in the night by armored guards who drag her, in her nightgown, to a carriage to see the Tyrant who rules her village and all the surrounding lands, you know that things are going to go badly for her. And when the Tyrant himself tells her that his two children have wandered out of the palace and disappeared into the Woods, a cursed forest that absolutely no one - except Veris - has ever returned from alive, when the Tyrant tells her to go back in, and to do the impossible by returning with his children, and to do it all in a day or he'll slaughter her entire village as punishment, when that happens you know this is not going to be a story with a happy ending. The only questions are what will go wrong, and how bad will the consequences be? I was fully prepared, for example, for Veris to be successful but too late, and to come home to a village burned to the ground.
The edge of the woods are safe, but inside the mortal woods are another, different, otherworldly woods, and there's no obvious barrier or way of knowing when you've crossed from one to the other ... except until after you've gone too far. There are beings that live in the woods, that are sort of like people, but also very, very strange. Mohamed hasn't written any elves or faeries, nothing so safe or recognizable. Nothing with a name, except the unicorn, who's the most monstrous thing in there.
More than anything else, Mohamed's treatment of magic and supernatural creatures reminds me of SM Wheeler's novel Sea Change, which isn't even a helpful comparison, because hardly anyone else has heard of it or read it. But what I mean is that all the creatures of the forest are weird, and powerful, and dangerous, and Veris and the kids, when she finds them, are achingly vulnerable, nearly helpless, except for what they can get by being polite, and clever, and quick. But if something from the forest catches you, and it has you by rights of you breaking a rule - no cutting wood, no spilling blood, all deals will be unfair, no cheating or arguing or else they become unfairer still - there's nothing you can do, no way to fight, no way to win by strength.
So, Veris enters the woods. Through trials and by her own wit and determination, she finds the kids, and through more trials and hardships she leads them back toward the edge of the forest, back to reality, and their home, the castle of the Tyrant, as the day wanes, and time runs out, and you know it won't be quite that easy or straightforward... Time maybe passes differently in the forest, but Mohamed skillfully takes from morning to afternoon through a long evening into the night, without ever stating the phase of the day, just with the mood and the colors and the light. It's just one of many impressive things about what she's written here.
Along the way, we learn a bit about Veris and her village, about the Tyrant, how he fights, how he wins and conquers, about what happened to Veris when he first arrived, and she was just a girl, and her parents were still living, about why she came into the cursed forest the first time, before she knew she'd become a legend by making it back out. There's not a lot of worldbuilding here, but as with everything else in this jewelbox of a book, there's the right amount, there's just enough. We learn just enough about the cruel logic of the woods and its denizens, see just enough adventure as Veris passes through, see just enough of flashbacks and of the wider world.
This is a good one. You might give it a miss, if you think it's too dark. But if you like this sort of fantasy, combining realistic politics of conquest with unsettling and uncanny glimpses of the supernatural, this is an easy and rewarding pick.
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