The Butcher of the Forest

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is an entrancing dark fairy tale novella. The protagonist, a practical woman in her late 30s, is sent into a horrifying and dangerous forest on a quest, and an adventure ensues. I really enjoyed the writing; at times it reads like nature writing, with sensory descriptions of the forest that made you feel that you were right there in the midst of it. The horror/fantasy elements reminded me at times of Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, at times of Princess Mononoke, and at times of Over the Garden Wall (if it was much darker). An excellent fall read.

Like the previous book I have read by this author (The Annual Migration of Clouds), this book does a lot in few pages. They also both had somewhat open-ended conclusions, so I come away from this one with the same feeling I had with the previous book: it feels like a window into a world about which I would love to read more stories.