Review: 'The Butcher of the Forest' by Premee Mohamed

Some woods are not to be trusted. They are at once here and there, a part of our world and a part of theirs. No one enters the northern woods, except that Veris has, and now she is forced to go back in by a tyrant to rescue his children. What could go wrong, except everything? I had a good old time with The Butcher in the Forest, which is a grim kind of fairy tale. Thanks to Tordotcom and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay!

Pub. Date: 27-2-2024
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group; Tordotcom

A world-weary woman races against the clock to survive a deadly forest in this dark, otherworldly fairytale from Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author Premee Mohamed.

At the northern edge of a land ruled by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild, forbidden forest ruled by powerful magic.

Veris Thorn—the only one to ever enter the forest and survive—is forced to go back inside to retrieve the tyrant's missing children. Inside await traps and trickery, ancient monsters, and hauntings of the past.

One day is all Veris is afforded. One misstep will cost everything.

Adaptations of fairy tales, either direct ones of individual tales or those that take a freer approach to the whole genre, had something of a heyday a while back, but they still remain very popular. A downside to their initial popularity, for me at least, was that I began to get a little tired of all the "Beauty and the Beast but with horny elves", "Cinderella like you've never seen it", "Rapunzel, but make it kick-ass" kind of tag lines. I think what got to me was that desire to somehow top the original tale, to make it "right" by making it more modern, or more feminist, or more fair, etc., which I believe belies the actual purpose of these kind of fairy tales. What I enjoy about fairy tale adaptations is not this kind of sanitisation, but rather when authors dive deep into the darkness of the tales, which has always been there and through which they actually gain much of their beauty. Think of Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber collection, for example, where the explorations of power and sexuality created a stunning, if bloody, atmosphere. With The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed also looks the darkness of fairy tales straight in the face. In this novella, she plays with the whole genre, its loose set-up and worldbuilding, its beautiful darkness and horrifying beauty, and the agency which weaves its way through. 

Veris is dragged out of her bed one morning by the men of the Tyrant, who has been reigning over her land for a while now. She has no idea what he wants from her, until he reveals that during the night his two children wandered into the woods. No one goes into those woods, which he would have known had he been from there. Veris, however, has been into those woods, years ago, when she went to retrieve a child who had been lost. When someone is lost in the woods, you have one day to retrieve them before they are forever gone. Veris doesn't want to go back, but with death hanging over her family if she does not succeed, she gathers her supplies and heads into the woods. The woods are not what they appear, shifting from normal woods to a quasi-fey realm in which various creatures and monsters wait to lure you into their trap. To tell any more would be to ruin the suspense of the tale, but I can say that I was very pleasantly surprised by what Mohamed did with her tale. Veris is an intriguing protagonist as well, who holds many of her cards close to her chest. I really enjoyed finding out more about her through her actions and responses, rather than through being told things about her. When, towards the end, we do find out more about her past, it is heart-breaking and brings a painful clarity to her previous behaviour. 

This is my first work by Premee Mohamed and I absolutely adored her writing in The Butcher. She strikes a really good balance between painting a detailed picture and leaving some of the edges blurry enough that the reader gets to keep asking questions. I loved the creatures she came up with, how they play with traditional images and give them a new twist, and I also really appreciated Mohamed's willingness to go hard with the plot. Towards the end, there is something of a shock, which I wouldn't call a twist necessarily, but which did provide a really nice moment of "even in fairy tale-esque stories happy endings are very far from guaranteed". As such, there are some content warnings worth giving for the novella. It includes war violence, body horror, sexual abuse of a child/teen, and discussions of death. I think these difficult themes are handled well in The Butcher, with Mohamed neither flinching away from the darkness nor using them for shock. As such, The Butcher becomes something of a meditation of imperialism and war, the generational aftershocks, the small trauma and the large. I cannot wait to read more my Mohamed in the future!

I give this novella...

4 Universes!

The Butcher of the Forest is a beautiful, dark fairy tale, written with an excellent eye for fairy tale traditions and the ways in which to innovate the genre. Both the themes raised and imagery crafted by Mohamed will stay with me.