2015 read #53: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black.

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
328 pages
Published 2015
Read from September 18 to September 22
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5

Comparing and contrasting books with vaguely similar works I'd reviewed before seems to be my default rhetorical device these days. In that spirit, the obvious parallel to be drawn here, at least in the early chapters, is with the fantasy output of Michael Swanwick. If The Hunger Games is babby's first 1984, then Black's scene-setting, with small-town high school students getting drunk and breaking bottles over the casket of a sleeping faery prince, is like babby's first The Iron Dragon's Daughter, mixed with a soupçon of "The Edge of the World" (reviewed here). Black's fey tourist trap (however literal that might be) lacks the near-Soviet nihilism of Swanwick's milieu, but also feels closer in spirit to the old-time faery lore I love so well, rather than just search-and-replacing modern social ills with magical equivalents (which was one reason The Iron Dragon's Daughter was, for me, an almost-classic, rather than a mindblowing masterpiece, as it possibly should have been).

Once the setting is established, The Darkest Part of the Forest shifts away from that Swanwickian flavor and, to my mind at least, settles into a more conventional YA fantasy mold, albeit a pleasingly progressive sort of YA in which the central protagonist is a girl who likes to kiss lots of different boys, and her brother is matter-of-factly gay, and high school kids drink and curse a lot. (It is implied, unfortunately, that the only reason the girl makes out with lots of boys is her parents' neglect and absentee habits.) The book as a whole is satisfying, full of winsome touches and humor, though the emotional beats lacked punch, I felt, and the action scenes were a bit on the choppy side. The setting was perhaps the most memorable facet of the book, and that, of course, was pretty much just another variation on the modern fantasy interpretation of the Unseelie Court, a very New England-ish spin on the concept that could be compared to the witch-tourism of Blithe Hollow in the movie ParaNorman. If, you know, I were the sort of reviewer to shoehorn random comparisons into my reviews.

And no, it hasn't escaped me that this is the sixth book in a row to receive a mildly positive, I-liked-it-but-won't-commit-to-loving it grade of three and a half stars. It's all arbitrary anyway.