Review: The Butcher of the Forest, by Premee Mohamed

The Butcher of the Forest
Premee Mohamed
ISBN 9781250881786
160 pages
Release: February 27, 2024
Publisher: Tor.com

Premee Mohamed is one of Canada’s wee treasures, a writer confident in her art, a storyteller of exceptional gift, and has been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. She’s also an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue: Escape Pod.

To my chagrin, I have not read any of Premee’s work. Until now. And what a delight these past few days have been reading her forthcoming novel, The Butcher of the Forest.

The marketing blurb reads thus:

At the northern edge of a land ruled by a merciless, foreign tyrant lies a wild, forbidden forest ruled by powerful magic.

Veris Thorn—the only one to ever enter the forest and survive—is forced to go back inside to retrieve the missing children of the Tyrant. Inside await traps and trickery, ancient monsters, and hauntings of a painful past.

One day is all Veris is afforded. One misstep will cost everything.

What Mohamed delivers is an elegantly written odyssey deeply influenced by the Celtic mythology of the Otherworld inhabited by the Sidhe. In Mohamed’s reimagining, she creates a new and credible world, dominated by a ruthless ruler known simply as the Tyrant. Veris Thorn, the protagonist and reluctant hero, is put under command to enter the forest upon pain of death for her and all her family, should she unsuccessfully return from her mission to retrieve the Tyrant’s two missing children. There is no mention of reward should she be successful, other than she and her family get to keep their lives.

What ensues is an Homerian epic of adventure, fear, trickery, and pain. Mohamed paints a bleak and believable landscape through her deftly defined characters, demonstrating an exacting command of language, imagery, and pacing. There were many occasions I paused in the reading to savour the elegance of a phrase, or the poignancy of a moment. These are real people, with real problems, stumbling at great odds through a forest which is very much a booby-trapped warzone, one bent on torture and capture. I was minded, at times, of M. Night Shyamalan.

Further, Mohamed demonstrates an intimate understanding of the difficulties of traversing wild terrain, of the conditions within an old-growth forest during all weather and all times of the day. There wasn’t a single moment when I found myself sputtering about lack of authenticity.

The denouement is a Sphynx-like scene of dangerous riddles and demands, a moment of personal cost almost beyond endurance. It is a moment of sacrifice, and of artifice, from a woman already crushed under the weight of obligation, grief, and memory.

Anyone who has ever suffered loss will understand this moment. Mohamed pulls upon all our deepest knowledge, particularly for women, of what it means to be human, and she does so through the telling of a fantasy story. That’s a remarkable gift and talent. The cover, by the way, is gorgeous, reminiscent of the 15th century Unicorn Tapestries.

If you’re looking for an enveloping story, something to take you out and away, to transport you, if you will, to an Otherworld, I highly recommend Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest.