A beautiful dark folktale of a novella with an immersive atmosphere and lovely writing. A slight twist on the classic 'missing children in the forest' tale.

Thank you Tor for the opportunity to read this novella, my opinions are my own.

It was bad to run; things would chase you.

This horror novella is fascinatedly creepy filled with things that haunt your nightmares. All those lessons about the woods of old (or the Appalachian woods), would come in handy. This reminds us that there are things out there that are beyond our immediate understanding.

Veris is summoned to the Tyrant and put under the task to rescue his errant children who wandered into the woods at night, now Veris has 24 hours to go in, find the kids, and get back out since she is the only known person to make it out alive with a missing child. This is a battle of wits from the get go and it is fabulous.

My only complaint would be that this could have been longer, but it leaves you wanting more.

Highly recommend for those who like creepy books, think Erin Craig's Little Favors, a scary Hansel and Gretel, or the original fairy tales about things in the woods.

This is my second book by the author and the writing goes so hard?

"Time was so precious, but life more precious still; they could not escape late but the must escape alive."

The Writing:
The first thing that stood out to me, right from page 1, was the beautiful writing. I think in the previous work I read from them the writing could lean quite prose-y, but also sparse. Here there was a much stronger sense of repetition (of concepts, of phrases, of individual words) that I think was used to excellent effect-- it's steeped in fairytales, after all, and what's more fairytale than things coming threes?

The Themes:
While the book itself is quite short, that doesn't mean it isn't heavy. The subject matter is very dark and readers may need to look at trigger warnings in advance. There is death and loss and grief, impassive and cold cruelty, a loss of innocence, and the inevitability of failure.

The Characters:
I admired both Veris and Eleonor in their own ways as they tried to do their best to make it through the world around them and maintain strength that could be leant on for Aram. But I especially liked the creatures that lived in the Forest like the fox-man. The writing will not let you forget how other they are, similar to the fae in Emily Wilde's, but always with a lingering darkness, a lingering hunger.

Overall:
If you enjoy dark fairytales, if you don't need a happy ending, and if you enjoy beautiful writing then I would recommend you pick this up. It's admirable to watch the way the characters persevere in the face of extreme adversity, but also sometimes a bit of a gut-punch to bear witness to what they go through.

This novella was dreamt and haunting, with incredible packing and world-building in such a short amount of pages! Sometimes I am a little iffy on dark fairytale type books, but this is really a triumph.

Like a sugar stiletto to the heart with every chapter. Loss, oppression, the terrifying dislocation of faerie lands from the real, and what we must sacrifice to save others. Already designated as my very favorite book of 2024.

Who doesn’t love a dark and gothic fairytale that’s akin to a novella? The author did a great job with weaving a sense of impending doom into the story and maintained an eerie atmosphere. I like that our main character is older who uses her past to help bring the tyrant’s children home. I thought this was a good, quick read.

In THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST, Veris is forced to enter a deadly forest to save the children of the tyrant who rules over her home. She is the only person to ever enter the forest and survive, and her only saving grace is her knowledge from her last trip inside. Monsters, tricks and traps await her, and she has one day to save the children before the forest claims them for itself.

Premee Mohamed’s latest novella is an atmospheric and imaginative fairytale featuring a forty year old protagonist, creepy monsters, and discussions of colonialism and power. The tyrant’s wrath is quietly simmering in the background of the book—Veris knows that if she doesn’t return with the children then she dooms herself, her family and her village. The book explores power imbalances and discusses the injustice of life under tyranny, and the impact of tyranny on marginalized individuals. These themes are also explored through the monsters when they make bargains with Veris. Their prices are high and it made me think about how marginalized individuals are the ones who pay the cost of colonialism—we are the ones who bear the burden, and we are the ones who have to live with the injustices empires create.

Through all of her heartbreak and grief, Veris grounds herself with tokens that remind her of home. She thinks about her aunt and grandfather, and fights to survive for them. Veris has to make difficult choices in impossible situations, and she spends the novella trying to survive but never really gets to live. Is this not what people are doing in Palestine and worldwide? So many of us spend our lives fighting to survive instead of being allowed to simply exist. I couldn’t help but see the parallels to current global injustices while reading about the fictional ones in this book. This is what I couldn’t stop thinking about as Veris raced through the forest and constantly put her life on the line for someone who would never do the same for her.

Overall this is a great addition to Premee Mohamed’s body of work. If you enjoy this novella I highly recommend checking out her short story collection NO ONE WILL COME BACK FOR US. I haven’t read all of her books yet but the short story collection is my favourite, and I think it’s a must read for fans of speculative fiction.

This novella is out today! Thank you Tordotcom Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC to review.

Rating: 4.25/5

I love a dark fairytale, and this is such a good one! The writing is fantastic, and you easily get lost in the dark, spooky, fairytale.

The Butcher of the Forest
by Premee Mohamed
Dark Fantasy Novella
NetGalley ARC
Tor Publishing Group
Pub. Date: Feb. 27, 2024
Ages: 16+

Bordering the land on the north is a forest called Elmever and is where monsters live. To enter more than a few trees means you'll never find your way out. Veris Thorn once went beyond those first few trees to save a young child and is known to be the only person to go in and find their way out.

When the Tyrant's two children disappear, all tracks leading to Elmever, he orders Veris to find them and bring them out alive. If she does not, her entire village will pay.


The blurb caught my attention. A haunted scary forest that has monsters! The first few chapters were dark and I was caught, then the story flushed as it failed to include depth of this forest and the monsters. They weren't monsters, they didn't have enough monstrosity to them.

Sure one of the monsters was an interesting take on the 'species' but it was just a little lame, as were most of the other monsters and the human characters. Of them all, the Tyrant had the most personality.

The plot is based on the fairy myths, don't eat the food, etc, but as I said it lacks so much depth that a hundred or so pages of descriptions and back story would have brought this story to life. As is, it reads as if it was a bedtime story then hurriedly changed up for adults.

As to the title, ehhh. I saw no butchering, except for the Tyrant's rule but he didn't live in the forest, and the cover, the animals could've been 'a little more'.

It's not scary, not gory... It's mostly suitable for readers 16 and older, but I'm sure there are some 14-year-olds mature enough to read this. (At 14, I don't think would have been too impressed with this one, let alone scared.)

Had promise but didn't reach what it could have been.

2 Stars

Sometimes children go into the North Woods and they never come back. Only one person has ever gone into the North Woods and retrieved a child: Veris. Now, the tyrant's children have gone missing and he asks Veris to do the unthinkable - make that journey again to save his heirs. This book is a dark adventure into the eerie woods that also explores power, tyranny, and forces beyond our control. The forest itself is hauntingly beautiful and terrifying. It is a fast-paced, bite-sized read and totally worth the journey.

Well. That was super creepy. Excellent novella and the author really gets that fairytales mostly ended in screaming and blood before Disney got their hands on them.

This book was so unique in its plotting and worldbuilding in its 160 pages. I was pulled in to the imagery and the worldbuilding that Mohamed layered into this book. I wasn't always surprised by the motivations, but the turning of the forest and its beasts was fascinating. Mohamed is effective at showing things that unsettle you, to the point where it sometimes felt like I was bordering on a horror novel, unsettling me with the creatures I was meeting. It also often felt like a spin on old fairytales I've known.

Veris is such a unique and interesting character. I was so excited to see a character who is older and has seen the world, being led into scenarios she never hoped for. Overall, this was an effective novel with great storytelling. I will say that some of the book felt like it teetered between rules for the world and throwing them away, and I wasn't always sure how the system worked. But overall that is a small nit for a wonderful novella with atmospheric storytelling.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor for the advanced copy of The Butcher of the Forest! This book is a novella that is jam packed with action, magic and tragedy. The north woods are full of mystery and horror - children go in and never return. Veris, a local woman who is the only one who has ventured into the woods and returned, is tasked to go back and retrieve the Tyrant's two children who have wandered off and disappeared into the woods.

It was a very quick read and as the reader, you're cast into this world where nothing is what it seems and your eyes cannot be trusted. I really enjoyed reading this book and appreciate that the main character is an "older" woman, which isn't typical for this genre (or at least in my opinion). I only wish there were chapters because even though it's short already, without chapters, the story feels longer than what it really is. Overall, I enjoyed it and love the cover art as well!

Wow, this book had me by the throat. Absolutely gorgeous prose, plot progression I could not look away from, and an ending that left me weeping and wanting more stories in this universe immediately.

Mohamed takes a pretty tried-and-true dark fairy tale plot, journeying into the otherworldly woods to rescue someone who was lost, and makes it so present and cruel and heartbreaking. There’s messy, difficult morality. There are innocents and there’s tyranny and there’s a deep sense of being trapped, that this is inevitable, not because of the nature of the woods but because of the nature of human beings. Veris (who I ADORED) navigating the quiet horrors of the Elmever is just the surface layer of a story about hatred and love and ownership and responsibility, in a situation where every possible outcome is in some way painful. Where there’s no satisfying ending to be had and no noble sacrifices to be made, only impossible choices and terrifying mistakes.

And then, to bring just a little bit of light back at the very end, a little bit of kindness..! I cried and cried. This is a quick and satiating read. Stunning.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC. I really liked the beginning, the prose was beautiful and it seemed like it would be an interesting story to read. I expected part fairy tale part horror story before reading this and I think there was a little of that - there were the rules of the forest like not eating or drinking anything from the forest or shedding the blood of the inhabitants, there was the not everything you see is real, and I liked that these elements were present, I just wish they could have been a bit more. And I think there were certain things that were supposed to be scary or horrifying but I didn’t really feel anything. There were stakes but I didn't really feel it and I started to get bored with the escape from the forest stuff cause it felt kind of repetitive.

Spoiler: The only thing that was shocking but not in a good way is with regards to something that happens in the end - i didn't really enjoy the child sexual abuse reveal at the end because it felt like it was just mentioned for shock value but maybe that’s just me.

The Butcher of the Forest is a high stakes, high octane novella. I did not realize it was a novella when I began reading the ebook, so it was a little bit of a surprise when I finished it in one day. It is on the darker side, but I still found it an enjoyable read. I am glad that the author did not feel pressured to expand the story to novel length, but I’ll be interested to see if there are any future novels planned for this world.

When the cover of a book has animals with their skulls out on it, I feel like the audience is probably well-primed for the kinda gross - or at the very least rather unsettling - events that are about to unfold. Because - spoilers - this is not a story about a happy fun man who has a meat-and-sundries shop in an enchanting woodland paradise. These woods are creepy. So do go into it with that in mind.

That being said, Mohamed has managed to do the thing I always appreciate when authors do - she's stayed on the near side of the horror line - it's going to leave you feeling a bit ill at ease, but it never fully breaks out into the full on scary, the "guess it's time for the nightmares", actually horror-horror. And, because I am a great coward to the very depths of my soul, this is perfect for me. I want some horrible skull-creatures, I want nastiness... but only up to a point. The Butcher of the Forest takes me a fair way towards the edge of that line, but never threatens to step across it.
What it does do is give us a very good fairytale feeling story of a journey into a wood that might also be another wood, in another place, or no place at all, inhabited by creatures that aren't totally within the human scope of understanding, at least in the traditional sense. Unless you're Veris, our protagonist. Veris went into the wood a long time ago to fetch back a child that had disappeared there, something no one else had managed to do, because Veris Knows things. Not big, grand magics, but just enough to give her the wisdom and sense to get in and get out with what she came for. Much good though it may have done her. Now, many years later, she's been asked - well, not exactly asked but we'll come back to that - to go and do it all again, to fetch back another two children lost to the dangers of the North Forest, a Forest no one in the village goes into, and in which any lost children are simply considered dead. The North Forest is not to be messed with.

But when the two children lost in there are the children of the Tyrant? The Tyrant who knows you successfully made that trip once before? Well, sometimes heroism isn't a choice you get to make for yourself. Sometimes someone has decided your heroics are their due, and there's not much you can really do about that.

Which brings us to the core of what's so good about The Butcher of the Forest as a story - it's a story that understands the place a person may be forced to occupy, in the sort of world that so many fantasy stories like to draw on. Because Veris lives in a village - a land - occupied by the Tyrant. His name isn't ironic. And through her musings on her own past, and the events of the story as we witness them, we see a much better appreciation of what that might mean than I have come to expect of pseudo-medieval fantasy. Not so much in the understanding that social hierarchies exist, which is often covered perfectly well, but in the understanding of the layerings of explicit and implicit in the power dynamics that fuel them, and critically, in the legacy of what it took to get the world to that place.

Veris remembers the war that brought the Tyrant to power here. Veris remembers the cost - especially to her personally. The cost to her family and her body. Mohamed is perfectly blunt in what that conquest will have meant, and keeps on meaning, in the family that is a woman in her forties, her aunt in her 70s and her grandfather pushing 100 forming a household together, with the obvious gaping wounds of missing family members. And so, when Veris is picked up with some lack of courtesy at an inhospitable hours and pushed to her knees before the tyrant, there is no question of dramatic resistance. This power is a power to be suffered through and survived, if you can. It asks too much but you have to obey nonetheless.

Seeing that just written plainly on the page, in every act and choice of the heroine was just... kinda powerful. And just as grim as any horrible skull creature the woods had to offer.

And it gets better, because the children Veris is being sent in to rescue are the Tyrant's own. This man who has done such harm to her people, who threatens her family so she'll do this thing for him that no one else has done. A lot of the story has an undercurrent to it of Veris' torn emotions - her hatred of this man, her knowledge of what he has done... against the as-yet innocent of his children. They may well grow up to be their own monsters, they may well already be being shaped into them, but as yet... as yet? They're innocent. They are not the owners of their father's crimes. But they are part of the system as it is. They are its inheritors. They are an intrinsic part of a system that is anything but innocent itself. There is nothing but complexity to their place in relation to Veris in this world.

So it is this constant musing on that tension that underlies the whole of Veris' story in this book. She finds herself caught between the poles of resentment and understanding, as well as the past and the present, as her trip into the dangerous lands inside the North Forest naturally summon memories of her last trip.

The narrative threads through these moments of the past delicately, with a measured pace, so it takes much of the story to fully understand the story that came before, and its full significance. The moment when every piece finally clicks into place does not feel like a revelation, merely a moment of satisfied understanding, because those foundations have been so carefully built as we went the whole way along.

But this tension, this satisfying weaving of opposing points, would not work nearly so well were not Veris such a good character to infest the point of view of. She's already a rare thing in being a heroine in her 40s - I do love to see a fully adult women still being allowed to be the focus of a story - but she's also just someone with a relatable pragmatism, as well as a realistic backstory, in that she truly feels like she has one. There are not many pages for this story to unfold across, but Mohamed dedicates enough page space within them to give Veris the very real sense of being a whole person, a person with a life that has happened before this, and for whom that past has real effects, writ both large and small, on how she interacts with the present. It feels relevant to her words, her actions, her choices throughout, and makes her feel so beautifully realised, especially alongside her pragmatism, her wisdom to know which are the battles she cannot fight and must resign herself to suffer through. There's a weariness to those decisions, the sense of a big sigh just being held back, that does a great deal of work in making me like her.

Is she a heroine though? It's a question I came away from finishing this wondering, and not to Veris' detriment. But it is simply that, unlike so many stories, she has ended up in this role through no agency of her own. It's a story that has happened to her, even as she is the one suffering it. Does that make her more the heroine than in stories where the protagonist's chose their battles? Or less? I don't know. But that lingering pondering... that too is a joy of the book.

Which leads me onto the ending... which I won't spoil. But I can say, without spoilers, that when you get there, you realise quite what the scope of this story is, and that, in one framing, it could merely be the prelude to another, different story. I kind of hope that story never gets written though. I enjoy that this exists as that prelude, and that there's a big wide gulf of potentiality hovering around the ending at what the "and then?" could be. It is forever left as an exercise of the reader to wonder and to dream it. Mohamed has left us a framework, and we can find our own answers within it, if we want to spend the time doing so (I certainly have).

All in all, The Butcher of the Forest is a wonderful novella that gives us a great (creepy - did I mention creepy?) story, but with a real meat of thoughtfulness under the skin, that sometimes peeps through the gaping wounds to give us a glimpse of what lies beneath. It's got the nastiness that fairytales often have, as well as a very offhand, pragmatic approach to magic that is unwilling to explain it because it simply does not need an explanation. When the horrible skull creature is coming after you, you don't have time to wonder exactly how it works, after all. The wondering is saved for the important things - how fucked up the world is under the bootheel of a tyrant, and the lingering horrors of one's own existence. Just how I like it.

The Butcher of the Forest is a dark fantastical novella by Premee Mohamed that hearkens back to the original old folktales by refusing to sand off the edges of the genre to make it safe or cozy. More faerie than fairy, as much horror as fantasy, it is as unsettling and bittersweet a read as it is a worthy one.

The tale is set in an empire ruled by The Tyrant, “the man with a thousand names and a thousand cities under his bootheel … bringer of death, lord of war, slaughterer of millions.” We meet him through the eyes of Veris Thorn, who is abruptly brought before him one morning, still in her bedclothes, to be thrown to her knees in his throne room with skulls on the wall to match the one he is drinking from when he tells her why she is there. It turns out that Veris’ village and the Tyrant’s castle lie next to a forest which none dare enter, since all who have done so have been lost forever. Now, “it was really only children that the north woods captured anymore. And even then, it was not the woods, but what lay within them … If you knew that your child had gone into the woods, you simply held a funeral; they were gone, they would never come back.”

Save once. Years ago, Veris had gone in after a child and somehow managed to get back out alive with the child. Now, the Tyrant’s two young children (Eleonor — nine, and Aram — seven), unaware or ignoring the wood’s dangers, have been lost in it, and the Tyrant tells Veris she must return and bring them back alive to him. Failing that, he tells her, “your village will be razed to the ground and burnt, and we will roast your people alive upon it and eat them” (did I mention this hearkens back to the original pre-Disney Grimm stories?)

Veris has no desire to return to the woods she barely escaped once, certainly not at the behest of the man who caused the death of her mother and father, and certainly not to rescue a pair of children likely to be monsters themselves. But the Tyrant has left her no choice and so she sets out. To save her people, yes, but also because, as comes up again and again, because Veris is herself not a monster, nor is she entirely willing to condemn currently innocent children even for the monsters they may (probably will) become.

The woods themselves are utterly alien, a place wholly its own, where things and creatures are never what they seem, though it is a place not without its own sorts of rules. Bargains can be made, payments offered. Though never without risk. Mohamed lush prose does a wonderful job at creating an atmosphere and world disturbingly askew, one that feels truly other, truly mythic.

The plot is paradoxically fast-moving in slow fashion, with Veris’ journey into and through the woods is tensely compelling. That tension is heightened by the ticking clock nature of the woods’ rules that Veris has only one day from when the children entered to retrieve them, or they must remain forever. We also learn more about Veris’ prior journey and her past life, the facts dribbled out bit by bit, though I don’t think most readers will be particularly surprised by them when they’re revealed, as they’re pretty clearly signposted throughout.

Veris as a character is easy to root for: stolid, determined, persistent, strong in the face of unimaginable (literally) horrors, fiercely protective, and willing to sacrifice herself. She’s also quite self-aware, of her own mistakes, her own weaknesses, her own possible unfairness in speculating at what being the child of the Tyrant means for these children’s alleged innocence, now or in their future.

That idea of “innocence” is a major theme throughout. As is the idea of “monsters,” a common enough point often made in fantasy as one sets literal monsters beside “regular” humans and asks the readers to try and distinguish them. If the metaphor is not particularly subtle here, or if it’s one that feels more than a little familiar, it’s no less effective. Nor, sadly, is it any less timely or necessary (maybe someday).

I won’t say anything about the ending save to remind you again this is more old-school folktale, so anyone looking for a purely happily-ever-after should look elsewhere. The Butcher of the Forest is not without hope or victory, but it is victory tinged with defeat and hope woven through with grief. In other words, it’s life. Highly recommended.

This was the snap to reality we deserve as fantasy readers who always demand happy endings (hi its me, I'm talking about me). There is no happiness, there is barely any hope, but what there IS is a fabulous MC, tricks and travails and I swear my heart was pounding every second of this journey. It's a good thing it was short because I don't know if I could take much more; I can't remember the last time I was so stressed and also so hopeless during a fantasy book. Brava to the author for this gem that was giving me the most visceral reactions.

The Butcher of the Forest is a fable through and through. It's not a fairytale; there's no "and they lived happily ever after". It's dark and disturbing at times, and precisely what a fable should be, a cautionary tale that teaches a lesson. To add to the feeling of reading an ancient story passed down through generations, the author makes use of some words we don't hear often in modern times - or ones we do hear, but not used for their archaic meanings. That's not a criticism, but a compliment to the author, Premee Mohamed.
This novella was creepy enough to make me not want to read it at night, but not so scary that I couldn't finish it. I'm notorious for refusing to watch scary movies, but The Butcher of the Forest did a great job of toeing the line between "this is creepy" and "I'm going to have nightmares tonight".
The pacing was fantastic; the story moved along quickly but not frantically. It's a common problem for the last third of a story (both full length and short form) to be packed with the author tying up loose ends. Premee Mohamed doesn't fall into this trap and I absolutely will want to read more of her writing. The other major thing I loved about this work is it seems Mohamed chooses every word carefully and meaningfully which is vital when it's only 162 pages. If she approaches all her stories. this way, she's an auto-buy author for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the opportunity to read and review.