Book Review: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

This is a book of lies and lost memories. This is a book of tales and curses and love. This is Holly Black doing what she does best: with gorgeous prose that flows beautifully, complicated female characters and a story of back and forth, The Darkest Part of the Forest is the author’s newest book and an elaborate modern fairytale that subverts genre expectations.

Title: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Author: Holly Black

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

Publisher: Little, Brown
Publication Date: January 13 2015
Hardcover: 336 pages

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.

Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.

At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.

Until one day, he does…

As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did I get this book: Review copy via Netgalley

Format (e- or p-): eBook

Why did I read this book: I love Holly Black’s books and this one in particular sounded so amazing.

Review:

Down a path into the darkest heart of a forest, lies a glass coffin and in it sleeps a cursed prince with horns on his head. As far as anyone knows, through countless generations, he’d always been there, forever asleep. No matter how many times people tried, or what anyone did – or how many kisses were pressed to the glass by both boys and girls – he never woke up.

But this is only one tale amongst many in the strange town of Fairfold, where humans and fae exist side by side in an uneasy truce of unspoken rules. For there is also the tale of Ben and how he was blessed with the gift of music – a blessing that turns into a curse. And the tale of Jack, a changeling swapped by his mother for protection and adopted by his human parents. And most important of all, there’s tale of Hazel, the girl-who-would-be-knight.

Fairfold’s inhabitants are protected if they follow certain precepts but sometimes, townsfolk go missing or go crazy. But no one will mention any of that in Fairfold, because the town thrives as long as the tourists keep coming to see the horned boy.

But something else lies deep in the darkest part of the forest and it’s growing stronger and stronger.

…And then one day the sleeping boy is awakened from his cursed slumber and no one knows why or how.

Except for Hazel and her beloved brother Ben.

This is a book of lies and lost memories. This is a book of tales and curses and love. This is Holly Black doing what she does best: with gorgeous prose that flows beautifully, complicated female characters and a story of back and forth, The Darkest Part of the Forest is the author’s newest book and an elaborate modern fairytale that subverts genre expectations.

Hazel is the narrator, as unreliable as it can be. Without spoiling the details of the story, much of The Darkest Part of the Forest delves into Hazel’s personality, sense of self-awareness and her memories – those that she suppressed and those she doesn’t know she has.

The storytelling builds around Hazel’s central relationships. First and foremost, the one between her and her brother Ben. Theirs is that type of loving, close relationship that at some point derailed because of an unhealthy mixture of secrets, shame, guilt and jealousy. It’s as complicated and complex as it can be and all the more engaging because of that. There is also Jack, the boy she loves and whom she never expects to love her back. Another thing that Holly Black does really well (see: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown) is the exploration of one’s deepest desires, the attraction to danger and darkness and the lure of immortality. The relationship with immortal beings is also present and accounted for here, all the more important because of the story’s main pairings: Hazel and Jack; and Ben and the boy whose love declaration at a Time of Danger is the cheesiest, most happy-making thing in the entire novel.

Finally, there is Hazel’s relationship with herself.

Hazel’s narrative goes back and forth between past and present, revealing aspects of her life little by little as though she is afraid to let even herself know or remember the things she has done and felt. There are sides of herself that she is not aware of (oh, the fae and their bargains and curses). Discovering those, unveiling the Mysteries of Hazel and how amazingly courageous she is are what make the story (Night Hazel! Knight Hazel!) but also what sometimes, breaks it. There is a storytelling choice that keeps things from the reader for as long as possible – if I will be honest, it was at times frustrating because it felt forced. In parallel, even though I loved Hazel (just as she was), the representation of her emotional make-up was more told than she shown, with unfortunate heavy-handiness.

The explanation for her behaviour when it came to how she related to boys for example, was presented as a mathematical equation: starting with X and after Y happened it inevitably and neatly led to Z. Rather than a messy emotional state of mind that could be interpreted, I was left with what felt masticated hand-holding.

In spite of those criticisms, The Darkest Part of the Forest is a great, beautifully written tale that explores guilt, secrets, relationships, courage, fate and choices extremely well. Plus, boys kissing, girls kicking ass and a Monster With a Heart. All in all, a perfect start to 2015.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.

As far as Hazel Evans knew, from what her parents said to her and from what their parents said to them, he’d always been there. And no matter what anyone did, he never, ever woke up.

He didn’t wake up during the long summers, when Hazel and her brother, Ben, stretched out on the full length of the coffin, staring down through the crystalline panes, fogging them up with their breath, and scheming glorious schemes. He didn’t wake up when tourists came to gape or debunkers came to swear he wasn’t real. He didn’t wake up on autumn weekends, when girls danced right on top of him, gyrating to the tinny sounds coming from nearby iPod speakers, didn’t notice when Leonie Wallace lifted her beer high over her head, as if she were saluting the whole haunted forest. He didn’t so much as stir when Ben’s best friend, Jack Gordon, wrote in case of emergency, break glass in Sharpie along one side—or when Lloyd Lindblad took a sledgehammer and actually tried. No matter how many parties had been held around the horned boy—generations of parties, so that the grass sparkled with decades of broken bottles in green and amber, so that the bushes shone with crushed aluminum cans in silver and gold and rust—and no matter what happened at those parties, nothing could wake the boy inside the glass coffin.

When they were little, Ben and Hazel made him flower crowns and told him stories about how they would rescue him. Back then, they were going to save everyone who needed saving in Fairfold. Once Hazel got older, though, she mostly visited the coffin only at night, in crowds, but she still felt something tighten in her chest when she looked down at the boy’s strange and beautiful face.

She hadn’t saved him, and she hadn’t saved Fairfold, either.

Rating: 8 – Excellent

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