159 pages
Published 2024
Read from May 7 to May 8
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
This mesmerizing dark fairy tale lures you deeper through the wood right from the first page. Mohamed's prose is sinuous with grief, strange beauty, and buried, desperate rage. It's imagery pulses with blood and sharpened horns.
The North Wood swallows all villagers who set foot into it. The only people who have ever returned alive from the Wood are Veris Thorn, and the child who, once upon a time, she had ventured into the forest to save. The child came back alive, but irrevocably changed.
Veris is summoned by the Tyrant to rescue his two children, his heirs, who have wandered into the Wood. But the human Tyrant is every bit as monstrous as any hungry creature she might meet in the forest — or perhaps more so. Veris is told that, if she fails this impossible task, her surviving family will be killed, her village massacred and burned. Predators of all sorts, it seems, savor the pain of their prey.
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