A Forest, Darkly by A G Slatter
I would like to thank Titan Books for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan Books
Published – Out Now
Price – £9.99 paperback £7.99 ebook
Deep in the forest lives Mehrab the witch, quietly battling her demons. One evening, a young woman arrives at her door pursued by god-hounds, who wish to destroy all those practising magic, and Mehrab’s solitary existence is disrupted. Together they forge a cure for their isolation with heartbreaking consequences... Meanwhile, in the local village, children begin to disappear. Sinister offerings appear on Mehrab’s doorstep, and a dark power pursues her through the trees. As the villagers turn hostile and the god-hounds close in, Mehrab finds herself at the centre of a struggle to save the soul of the forest, the life of an old love – and her own new-formed family.
Over the last few decades our attitude to the character of ‘The Witch’ has significantly changed. Initially as a child witches were very simply evil – a wicked monster in stories and the green faced costume with pointed hat that you’d see out for Halloween. A lot of effort has been made to resolve the actual history of witch trials and now I think most accept that many innocent women were tortured and murdered because of gossip and ignorance with scandals such as the Pendle Witch trials and Salem now having very different judgements on them. More recently the power of the witch has been a metaphor for women owing their power and many tales have been told of young women fining themselves using the power of witchcraft. All of this is quite positive, but we sometimes forget the witch is often an older woman and their stories are just as important. In AG Slatter’s excellent fantasy novel A Forest, Darkly we meet one such witch who has found her own sort of balance in life and yet a series of incidents threaten to unravel it all, but she also must finally face up to who is she deep down. A tale now creating one of my favourite witches in fantasy and an example of excellent storytelling awaits the reader.
There is a small village on the cusp of becoming a town called Berhta’s Forge and this is situated by a vast and dark forest. In the forest lies the cottage of Mehrab. A fifty-year-old witch specialising in treating injuries and ailments with the reluctant approval of her nearby community. Mehrab is quite happy with that distance and tends these days to keep people at arm’s length. Once again as often happens Fenna has arrived with a young woman in need of shelter. Rhea is a woman with power that has been discovered and faces the priests known as god-hounds chasing her and putting her to death. The pair reluctantly agree to work together. But at the same time strange disappearances of children alarm the locals and Mehrab becomes increasingly aware something evil is stirring in the woods and it has noticed there isa witch nearby.
Long-time blog readers will know I am a huge fan of Slatter’s work and this is another tale that fits into Slatter’s Sourdough universe. A land very much filled with unique spins on myth, folklore and fairy tales but very much doing their own things. However, for me this story is a big change from the most recent cycle of stories and perhaps signals a wider new direction for Slatter’s next set of tales too. It could very easily have been Rhea who is centre stage but this time Salette offers an older woman in the form of Mehrab. A fifty-year-old woman just past the menopause and very much living her life on her terms. Mehrab is funny, sarcastic, very smart, unlikely to tolerate a fool for very long and has her own quiet morality and yet battles loneliness, lust, lost love and some much deeper secrets she is very reluctant to share with anyone. In short Mehrab is one of the most interesting characters I’ve had the pleasure of knowing in a very long time. Rather than having a young woman focused on finding her role in the world we have someone already there, comfortable and in knowledge of her powers and when to use them and when not to and yet Slatter shows that is never really the end of the story. Mehrab has an arc too to follow and it’s a story that reminds us just as we approach middle aged we have to still figure out both what is next for us and also start to re-appraise our past that got us here.
To aid this there is some fascinating curveballs thrown in the storylines. We have a missing child who went in the woods with a red cloak, and we also have a young witch on the run. These all become quite key parts of the wider plot but not quite in the ways we are used to seeing them. Instead Slatter uses these events to explore the wider mythology of what forests contain and to explore Mehrab’s uneasy balance between both her community and within herself.
The first half of this involves how we have a community that views all witches with suspicions based on the stories we all have heard since we were young and yet they all agree when you’re sick, inured or potentially dying; or in need of help conceiving or delivering a child then and only then witches come in useful. Watching Mehrab balance this and her own delightful sarcasm is a fascinating balancing act but one that could very easily tip one way or the other and Slatter makes us feel that this balance is precarious. There is a more personal conflict that arises for Mehrab in the form of her former lover the blacksmith Faolan a man who decided Mehrab was far too free spirited and he wanted marriage and children she did not seek to have in her life. Now widowed himself their relationship finds now the potential time for re-kindling. The relationship here is delightfully adult yet still filled with lust, love and miscommunication that make it just as fascinating at how these two will eventually work each other out.
The other side of this story is more focused on Mehrab herself and her magical world. With Rhea we have a witch in training also carrying her own traumatic experiences and watching the two women learn to talk and trust one another creates a very interesting partnership. One fascinating angle I did not expect is Mehrab shares one of her greatest secrets as to how she mages alone in the woods and this reveals both her ingenuity and how she too has tired to avoid her won pain and perhaps created a new torment of her own for herself. It’s a fascinating and surprising storyline I didn’t see coming and yet fully cements the wider story. Merab also talks to us about the path that got her to where she is now and we realise that Mehrab is a powerful witch that could very easily have had a very different life and clearly bigger adventures and some darker deeds have cast a long shadow on her. We know her past just enough to understand her, but it is tantalising aspect of her dangled I suspect (really hope) that Slatter will one day return to explore in detail but underlines that Mehrab is a delightfully complicated woman. Indeed, this story is often about the balancing act that adulthood requires. As we get older, we realise people ca be both good and sometimes bad bordering on evil or just incredibly selfish or stupid and how we choose to accept, ignore or punish that is in our own gift to control but it is never an easy decision as to what we will do next
The main story slowly reveals itself with a fantastic nightmarish spin on an old myth and the lengths that figure is prepared to go to for their goals are incredibly dangerous and often evil. It’s a worthy and sometimes overpowering opponent Mehrab is going to have to face. All the other plot points neatly coalesce around this and indeed lead to one of the most surprising turns in the story. It’s a point where you quietly mutter/scream how on earth will she survive this??? Slatter’s solution is beautiful and transforms what feels an earthy very local type of fantasy tale into something much bigger and mythic using some fascinating spins on powerful beings and yet this all clicks some earlier hints in the story together and the ultimate reveal works very very well as all the little clues we had missed get finally explained.
A Forest, Darkly for me is a bit of a triumph. Certainly one of the best tales from Sourdough but for me also offering such a delightfully unique complex adult woman to get to know who reminds me in many ways of one of my favourite witches - Granny Weatherwax, but perhaps a little younger and a bit more sociable. It’s a complicated and surprising story that befits this complicated and surprising woman and heralds a potential new direction for the next cycle of tales to come. I very strongly recommend this to fantasy fans.
