A Forest, Darkly is both a fantasy and a mystery. The Great Forest, where the action takes place, is a frontier where civilization seems to be slowly encroaching. Old magic and creatures are still very much alive here, and the presence of a witch has been tolerated by villagers for generations, but the world is changing. The village has grown since main character Mehrab, resident witch, arrived 20 years ago, and lately, something dark and insidious seems to be stalking the forest. This would be bad enough since it seems to have a particular interest in Mehrab, but then children from the village begin to disappear, and those that return are not the same. In order to figure out the mystery and protect herself and her neighbors, Mehrab is going to have to leave her solitary comfort zone and re-establish contact with people she thought she had removed from her life.
Mehrab is 50-ish and experiencing menopause. Author AG Slatter in her Author’s Note writes that this book is her ‘grumpy menopausal witch in the woods novel,’ and anyone who has experienced this phenomenon will certainly recognize the signs: Mehrab experiences hot flashes, tiredness, irritation/anger/impatience. She has always been standoffish, as witches tend to be for reasons of self preservation, but as she grows older she guards her privacy even more. In the village, they respect her because she is a talented healer and they fear her a bit because she is kind of cranky. Her cabin in the woods is isolated and quiet, a place where she can tend her animals and garden, gather plants in the forest, and secretly conjure up “summer husbands.” The summer husband is a homunculus made from wood fermented in a disgusting organic compound and used to do chores, among other things.
Mehrab’s isolation is disturbed one spring when an old friend, Fenna, brings her a “fosterling.” As organized religion makes inroads in cities, witches face persecution. Fenna is a “visiting sister,” that is, a witch who helps smuggle other witches to safe havens. Mehrab had once been such a refugee and it was Fenna who brought her to a witch named Yrse in the Great Forest. Yrse passed away but Mehrab has stayed and occasionally takes in these runaway witches. Rhea, the witch in question, is young and beautiful, which Mehrab finds a little annoying, and she is stubborn. Mehrab’s patience will be sorely tested by Rhea, but more concerning is that Rhea arrives just when Mehrab senses some evil presence in the forest that seems to be tracking her and trying to trap her. Then, unexpectedly, a couple from the village come to the woods looking for Mehrab because their daughter has gone missing. All of a sudden, Mehrab has to deal with people, and people really annoy her. A further complication is that an old flame, Faolin the blacksmith, has become widowed and has made it clear that he still loves Mehrab.
Mehrab’s quest to find the missing children and the source of evil in the woods forces her to put herself in harm’s way, often without any show of gratitude from the villagers she is trying to help. The evil threat seems to be growing in strength and spreading its influence in the village as winter approaches, and hours of darkness are the most dangerous. The storytelling gets suspenseful as we learn the source of the evil and the way to deal with it.
I was easily drawn into this story. There is a lot of action, even if some of the character development is not as strong as I would have liked. References to Mehrab’s past are intriguing but leave the reader with little or no explanation. Her childhood and her experiences at a court in a kingdom far away were apparently very important to her development as a witch and to her feelings of shame, but we only get fleeting references to these events. The end of A Forest, Darkly is not a cliffhanger, but it looks like Mehrab has set a quest for herself that is based on this murky past of hers. I would be interested in that story, too.
