The Butcher of the Forest

Premee Mohamed
Completed 5/31/2025, Reviewed 6/1/2025
4 stars

This was a terrific and very dark novella, nominated for the 2025 Hugo in that category.  I was impressed by the prose, the world building, and how much it pulled me in.  It took me a few days to read only because I was sleeping pretty well for a change.  So I didn’t stay up late trying to finish it, although I would have liked to.  

A terrible tyrant has conquered a country and rules with an iron fist.  In one of the villages lives Veris, a single, world-weary woman who just tries to make it from day to day.  She lives with her aunt and grandfather after her parents were killed by the tyrant.  She lives near a dangerous, other-worldly forest, from which everyone is warned away.  Many children have wandered into the forest, never to return, except for one.  And the one child was saved by Veris, the only person ever to return and with a lost child nonetheless.  Now, the tyrant’s two children have wandered into the forest and the tyrant calls on Veris to find them.  If she fails, either to find the children or return, he will kill her family and raze her town.  She has twenty-four hours to do so.

It's easy to identify with Veris as she trudges through life.  Then when her world is turned upside down by the tyrant, it only makes it worse.  I immediately felt for the rock and hard place she stood between.  She is forced to do something that is dangerous and the chances of success are miniscule.  Yet, I placed all my hope in her to accomplish her task.  That’s how much I empathized with and cheered her.

This had to be the scariest forest I’ve read about in many years.  It goes way beyond the Grimms’ forests, with strange creatures and undead animals.  Perhaps the scariest was the black unicorn that chased her.  Less frightening at first was a horned man who will show her the way to the children if she gives him her saddest, most devastating memory.  Delving in the memory was even scarier than the horned man.  

The book ends on an only somewhat happy ending.  It begins darkly and it ends darkly.  But there is an epilogue that provides some hope.  I liked the whole non-traditional twists on the traditional haunted forest idea, as well as the take on Veris as an independent woman in a world where she is expected to be married and homebound.  I give the novella four stars out of five.  It was just the right length for maximum impact.  This book will land high on my ballot for the novella category this year.