How many books with witches living on the edge of a dangerous wood have you read? Probably many, and even if you haven’t, maybe from just looking at blurbs you already know what to expect. The witch is maybe young or young-looking, and very pretty, and there’s usually a “witch hunter” or a demon or a shapeshifter that’s prohibitively hot and sassy and is after her for the same reason cats go after mice.

Gone are the days of the witch in Hänsel and Gretel. And I, for one, find that replacing one fairy tale trope for another modern fairy tale trope that’s not even part of the traditional lore isn’t my idea of improvement.

So when I do pick up a book with a witch protagonist, it must have something worthwhile to offer. In the case of this book, the blurb wasn’t selling me anything out of the ordinary, I took it up on A. G. Slatter’s name alone.

I’ve said this before: the author reminds me of another Angela for how she writes and weaves fairy tales and folklore into her stories in a way that makes them read both familiar and different at the same time, very immersive and atmospheric. That was my impression when I first found her work in an anthology years ago, by now she’s had enough experience and has polished her own style to be different to Angela Carter’s. Some similarities remain, and I’m glad for it, but Slatter is her own distinct flavour of fairy teller.

What does A Forest Darkly offer that’s different to the legion of witch-in-a-dark-wood stories out there? Oh, the answer is easy: Mehrab.

Mehrab isn’t your stereotype of a witch, she’s neither a hot girl nor a terrifying crone. She is a plain healer in her mid-fifties (my estimate) living by a town near a forest known for the usual dangers to folk and fauna, from which children start to disappear and she decides to unmask the culprit one day she accidentally spots the probable cause whilst out hunting. So far, a simple plot, even deceptively Cottagecore-like.

And then she accepts as apprentice a girl that is a Cinderella insert, except that this Cinderella set the prince on fire when he tried to rape her and is now in trouble for it. Oh, and turns out the town is called Berhta’s Forge and someone living there may or mayn’t be the Erlking, who may or mayn’t be behind the disappearance of the children and their cruel fates, and may or mayn’t have had a too-close connection to our witch, who in turn may or mayn’t have a secret past connected to a mysterious Marlinchina—a The Juniper Tree insert.

And because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition even in fantastical worlds, there’s an overzealous churchman doing overzealous churchman things, i. e., build a church and have his first witch hunted, tried, and executed.

What did I tell you about Slatter’s stories being a coexistence of the old and the new?

It’s in this combination of the stereotypical and the innovative that I stumbled upon my one and main issue with this book: the mixing of fairy tales and folklore isn’t quite smooth. There’s witchy lore, there’s religious stereotypes, and there’s Horror genre conventions aplenty, and there’s at least four tales mashed in into this sauce: Cinderella, The Juniper Tree, The Erlking, Little Red Riding Hood, and a dash of the forest god Cernunnos. And the one that stands out as the sore thumb full of bone splinters sticking out of it is the second fairy tale, which is shoved in midway through the book and is rather confusingly told (it took me an age to figure out who Marlinchina was).

I should clarify that it isn’t the number of tales, or even the chosen tales themselves, what makes the combination unsmooth and full of jagged edges. I do think the tales are the right ones given the plotline and characters, and creatively chosen at that, but . . . It’s the mixing of the ingredients what makes for a good cake. You can take eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and flour and make a delicious cake with it, or you can make a complete mess of a batter even your cat will find insulting. In this book, the “batter” is rough, not a smoothly kneaded dough. To use Slatter’s own imagery, it’s a Sourdough full of ragged bits and un-melted pebbles that don’t make for quite the perfect bagel.

It’s Mehrab who keeps this dough cohesive and tasting good despite the rough pebbles your teeth crack on. She’s such an endearing grump, good-hearted and harsh, like a maiden aunt who will scold your mother for not giving you enough veggies and tell your dad he sucks at setting up an example for you whilst secretly slipping you a few candy bars when they’re not looking. Being a woman past middle age, she’s cynical about the world at large, but willing to help those that distrust her, and still romantic enough to enjoy a love affair in which she has the last word.

Faolan, the town’s blacksmith, is another interesting character I wish had had a larger role in this story. At first, he seems like just a love interest for Mehrab, a dependable widower with a rash son to pair up with Mehrab’s witchling protégée, until he gets dragged by his rekindled infatuation into her search for the missing children’s killer and you start to suspect there’s more to the man than meets the eye. I didn’t guess what the truth was, and I won’t say more than I already have in case you want to guess by yourself, so I’ll only say that the developments in this portion of the story are the most original take on the Alder King I’ve read. The solution Slatter comes up with for the mystery surrounding the Erlking is something I had thought of for a story I’ve had running in my head for a year (yes, I do create fairy tales to tell to myself when bored, my brain is weird like that), but even so I didn’t envision such a possibility, and now that I’ve read it, I quite like it. I think my friend Mariella, another Erlking fangirl, will like this arc if nothing else in the book.

The crowning glory arc here is, for me, the thin but strong thread of redemption that’s woven throughout the entire book. One question you ask yourself is the motives for Mehrab’s presence in Berhta’s Forge, as you are told early in the story that she was brought to this town by her witch mentor, the same one who brings Rhea to be fostered and tutored by Mehrab. But why? What does Mehrab need protection from? Oh, a lot, it turns out. A lot to be protected from and a lot to atone for. I wasn’t expecting a redemption arc for a witch, not in this kind of story, and it was a bit of a punch to see her past catch up to bite her very hard on the rump. It’s such a bittersweet conclusion to her redemption arc, enough to make me curse the fact that no author seems to want to twist the original folktale so that the Erlking and Berhta get a somewhat happyish ending. I’m feeling like I’m the lone mariner aboard this ship.

But I’m nevertheless satisfied with it and how it all was wrapped up. Slatter’s stories aren’t happy stories, but they are memorable stories. And to me this is the most memorable of hers to date.

I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.