Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest is a dark fairy tale that wastes no time in getting the ball rolling. Veris Thorn is a young woman, a citizen of the Tyrant’s empire who is conscripted to retrieve his two children from the dark Elmever forest outside the empire’s borders. As it turns out, Veris is fairly well known throughout the land, she is the only person to ever enter Elmever and return. Everybody else who has entered has never been seen again.
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.
Veris is our main point of view character, she states early on how the death of her parents is a direct result of the Tyrant’s conquest and subjugation. That was many years ago, Veris is in her late thirties and she’s seen quite a lot of pain and suffering in her life. She hates the Tyrant (who never gets a name, and really doesn’t need one), but more than that, she fears the man. In other words, she has no choice but to go into the most feared place in the kingdom.
The Haunted Forest is one of the long-standing tropes of fantasy, fairy tale, and tales of darkness. It represents an a great unknown to people, especially those who are “civilized.” Mohamed plays with this to a wonderful degree, through Veris. She is very wary of reentering the place she once escaped because she knows how fortunate she was to escape the last time. During that previous visit she saved a child, now she has to save two children and she must accomplish this task in only 24 hours.
We don’t know too much about Veris, initially, but she does Know things – the “K” was intentionally capitalized for it denotes possession of arcane knowledge. We learn a little more about her through her journey in the Elmever forest and the inhabitants of the forest remember her. The fact that some of the forest is familiar to Veris doesn’t make it or its inhabitants any less horrifying.
Mohamed fills this relatively slim volume (just under 160 pages) with a lot of depth and nuance. Veris is not the typical Hero of fantasy, she is wise to the ways of the world. She is a woman who has suffered and deals with PTSD from that suffering quite regularly. She also deals with survivor’s guilt. Her parents were murdered, but she survived and that’s just one element of that particular form of guilt she feels.
This is a Fairy Tale in the classic sense of the word, the unsanitized versions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, where monsters were terrifying and characters deal with gruesome situations. There is no really feeling of safety for Veris or the children. But Veris is determined to ensure the two children, presumably young enough to still be “innocent” survive the ordeal as a result of their own mistake.
With an understated magical element, a dark supernatural forest that has a definite horror feel, The Butcher of the Forest is a potent tale whose complex depth is belied by is brevity.
Recommended.
Tor.com | Trade Paperback
February 2024 | 160 Pages
https://www.premeemohamed.com/ | Twitter: @premeesaurus
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
© 2024 Rob H. Bedford
