I’ve read quite a few quest novellas this year and generally haven’t fallen in love with any of them—not surprising, as I’m just not a huge fan of the quest plot structure—but after a few friends highly recommended Premee Mohamed’s novella The Butcher of the Forest, I decided to try another one, and I’m very glad I did.
The Butcher of the Forest doesn’t feature a search for any item of particular magical power, but rather for a pair of children who have wandered off into a magical forest from which no one returns. Only the main character has returned once before, with another missing child, and so when the Tyrant who has conquered and now rules her land threatens the lives of her village if she cannot return his children, there’s no option but to try again.
The way the lead’s backstory slowly comes clear over the course of the novella gives her some real depth beyond a generic quest protagonist, as does her difficulty squaring the innocence of the children she’s to save with the fact that they’re being raised to follow in the footsteps of their brutal, tyrannical father. Both are compelling subplots well worth the time the story spends developing them.
But the star of the story is the quest itself, and in particular a setting with mortal peril around every turn and atmosphere for days. I’ve already said that I don’t tend to like quest stories, and part of the reason is that it’s difficult to establish the right weightiness when the existence of the narrative as a whole means the lead will surely escape the early dangers, and when the knowledge of big dangers at the end makes the early dangers feel minor. But The Butcher of the Forest didn’t suffer one whit from either problem. The expertly crafted atmosphere creates an immersive weightiness that keeps the reader focused firmly on the current challenge and not looking ahead to the danger down the road, and everything about the storytelling screams that even if the quest is completed, there will undoubtedly be a cost. Perhaps that’s more on the quality of the storytelling than the plot elements themselves, but either way, Mohamed has crafted a tremendous story that hits a level I rarely see in quest narratives.
And because it’s a novella, a truly excellent quest narrative just makes for a truly excellent book. There are compelling subplots, but none of them elevate to the level of the main story simply because a 35,000-word novella requires the author to make different choices than a 400-page novel. It ends in a way that makes me want to know more (would I read a sequel that takes place years down the line? Absolutely), but as a veteran short fiction reader, I don’t see that as a drawback. Mohamed did a fantastic job with the story she decided to tell, and there being other stories of potential interest about the characters or the setting doesn’t detract at all from the finished product—if anything, it makes the story feel deeper than one might expect from a one-off adventure.
On the whole, The Butcher of the Forest is a sharp, atmospheric adventure tale with a compelling main character, gorgeously-wrought setting, and dramatic tension that picks up early and truly does not let go. It’s a focused story in a world that feels bigger, and it’s one of my favorite novellas of the year.
Recommended if you like: creepy forests, inhuman treatments of the Fae.
Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Survival and is Published in 2024 by an Author of Color.
Overall rating: 18 of Tar Vol’s 20. Five stars on Goodreads.