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Book: “After the Forest” by Kell Woods
Publishing Info: Tor, October 2023
Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour.
Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war.
Greta has a secret, the witch’s grimoire, secreted away and whispering in Greta’s ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you’ve ever tasted. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat.
But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her mysteriously addictive gingerbread, not to mention the rumors about her childhood misadventures, is a source of gossip and suspicion.
And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta’s magic—magic she is still trying to understand—may be the only thing that can save her. If it doesn’t kill her first.
Review: Like Mothman, there seems to be a certain trend towards Germanic fairytales this fall. This is the second fantasy book I’ve read that has pulled from German fairytales or been set in Germany. While I enjoyed the focus on Russian fantasy over the last few years, this feels like a natural next step and a refreshing shift in focus. This story, less a re-telling of “Hansel and Gretel” and more an imagined sequel to that tale, was definitely high on my TBR list for this fall. Unfortunately, while it started out strong and I had high hopes, it didn’t ultimately live up my expectations.
When I started reading initially there were a few flags about the writing style that were immediately raised. But as I kept pushing forward, I became invested in Greta’s story and was particularly intrigued by the romantic interest. Unfortunately, as the story continued, Greta somehow became a worse lead and said romantic interest disappeared for long periods of time. When those things started happening, my initial skepticism about some of the writing kicked back in, and I ended up generally having a fairly bad time after that. I’ll start with the character stuff, however..
Greta starts out as an independent young woman who is dealing not only with the aftermath of her traumatic experiences while trapped by a witch with her brother as children, but also struggling to keep herself and Hansel afloat as he continues to gamble their livelihoods away. To aide with this, she uses a spellbook she stole from the witch who captured them so many years ago to create irresistible baked goods. As such, she early on discusses how careful and wary she has always been towards the spellbook, knowing its original owner’s penchant for horror. But as the book continues, somehow Greta becomes actively stupider and decides, nah, this book I’ve gone years knowing is probably dangerous and evil is probably actually totally fine. This is only one example, but it reflects a larger trend: Greta’s story is told in a disjointed and unnatural manner. There is no grand reason for her to suddenly become dumber about this other than the fact that the book needs her to. Decision after decisions is made in this way, not only be Greta, but by the other characters around her.
At one point, she becomes obviously hypocritical about a late reveal in the story, blows up at the love interest and stomps off. She then meets another character who literally walks her through the errors of her thinking. Then she WALKS BACK to the love interest and apologizes and the story progresses from there. It’s such an unnatural and unnecessary scene. It’s paint-by-numbers character development where it doesn’t seem like the author has even taken the time to fully cover over the paint numbers in the design, having one character literally handhold the other through development.
Beyond that, the book packs in so many different themes and fantasy elements that it quickly turns into a muddled mess. Are we supposed to be interested in the dangers of the spellbook? Or, now I see we have shape shifters, is that the main focus? How about witchcraft, women, and Greta’s own slowly revealed powers? Or, here’s a very late introduction of an entirely new villain and magical curse that we must solve! It all became a hot mess quite quickly.
And now working my way backwards to the writing. I will say, before some of these character problems happened and the story twisted itself into a knot of different focal points, the pacing was fast and interesting and the writing style was capable of drawing me in. That said, the very first chapter did introduce me to something that would plague much of the rest of the story. There’s an initial confrontation with a bear, and the way the story is written, the scene jumps from thing to thing so suddenly that I legitimately thought we were starting out with a dream sequence; it had that same disjointed, disconnected style with no transitions that I associate with authors trying to reproduce the ever-shifting nature of dreams. But no, I soon discovered this was meant to be a simple enough scene. However, the lack of transitions between scenes and even moments within a scene was very distracting, and this strangeness carried throughout the book. I never had a good understanding of how much time was passing, or when we were jumping to another time and location, or anything like that, because there was no attempt to naturally transition from place to place, either literally or metaphorically.
Overall, I struggled with much of this book. It was honestly surprising, because even with the confusion about the non-dream-sequence beginning, the writing was fast and compelling and I thought I would enjoy it. But then things quickly fell apart and I was left quite disappointed by the entire experience. That said, if you’re a big fan of fairytale re-tellings, there may be aspects of this story that appeal. I do think the romance was compelling, and the writing was fast and relatable. But if you’re looking for a more serious fantasy fairytale, this isn’t it.
Rating 6: What started out with a lot of promise quickly fell apart with errors in execution and character development.
Reader’s Advisory:
“After the Forest” isn’t on any good Goodreads lists, but it should be on Hansel and Gretel Stories
The Library Ladies 