THE NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE
A woman must rescue two lost children from a malevolent magical wood in this eerie, twisted fable. A world of uncanny creatures, deadly beauty, and shattering violence beckons...
"A perfect mix of horror and fantasy." The New York Times
At the northern edge of a valley ruled by a ruthless foreign tyrant lies a wild forest, home to otherworldly creatures and dangerous magic. The local people know never to enter—for no one who strays into the north woods is ever seen again. No one, that is, except Veris Thorn.
When the children of the Tyrant vanish into the wood, Veris is summoned to rescue them. She has only one day before the creatures of the forest claim the children for their own. If she fails, her punishment will be swift and merciless.
To stand a chance of surviving the wood, Veris must evade traps and trickery, ancient monsters and false friends, and the haunting memory of her last journey into the forest.
Time is running short. One misstep will cost everything.
Review
Fast-paced, tense, fantastical and uncanny, The Butcher of the Forest is a perfect mix of horror and fantasy. The perilous dimension hidden inside the forest is full of wicked shape-shifting beings, undead deer and other monstrosities, but it's Mohamed's beautiful prose and endearing characters that make this a powerful story.
-The New York Times
Mohamed excels at telling the stories of ordinary people trapped by dark forces, and she infuses these characters with astounding tenderness and compassion. The Butcher of the Forest shows exactly why Mohamed is one of fantasy's rising stars.
-The Washington Post
The Grimm brothers can't hold a candle to Premee Mohamed and her fever dream of a fantasy novella.
-Polygon
Woven with the dark and dreamlike intricacy of a medieval tapestry, this novella implicates the reader as an accomplice in its monstrosity. It's exactly the kind of punishment we as readers deserve.
-Hiron Ennes, author of Leech
Nothing in nature matches the uncannily sweet murdermirth of Premee Mohammed. She will show you yearning in a scrap of cheese or the whole world in the rules of a game. This book is bigger inside than out... by a large margin.
-Meg Elison, Locus and Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife and The Pill
Hansel and Gretel meet Annihilation in Premee Mohamed's The Butcher of the Forest, a fairytale that shifts into a meditation on war and grief, one that asks questions about who is innocent and who is complicit in oppression. Come for the eldritch monsters; stay, as always, for Mohamed's critiques of power.
-S. Qiouyi Lu, author of In the Watchful City
An enchanting, bite-sized adventure. . . . Readers will be rapt.
-Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is the author of speculative fiction novels 'Beneath the Rising' (2020), 'A Broken Darkness' (2021), and novellas 'These Lifeless Things' (2021), 'And What Can We Offer You Tonight' (2021), and 'The Annual Migration of Clouds' (2021). Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of venues and she can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus
