The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black: review

The Darkest Part of the Forest
by Holly Black

Expected publication: January 15th 2015 by Indigo

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?


There’s a monster in our wood.
She’ll get you if you’re not good.
Drag you under leaves and sticks.
Punish you for all your tricks.
A nest of hair and gnawed bone.
You are never, ever coming…



Holly Black has done it again! She gives us dark, mysterious and scary story about a girl-knight, who swings a sword better than fairies, about her brother who has the gift to charm everyone with his music, and about a prince who is sleeping in a glass coffin in the middle of the forest. There are horns growing out of his head, and his face is of great beauty.

Sorry, but every time I think about his horns, I remember Daniel Radcliffe :D


Anyway, back to the point.

Fairfold was a strange place. Dead in the center of the Carling forest, the haunted forest, full of what Hazel’s grandfather called Greenies and what her mother called They Themselves or the Folk of the Air. In these woods, it wasn’t odd to see a black hare swimming in the creek or to spot a deer that became a sprinting girl in the blink of an eye.

Fairfold is a weird town. It’s full of fairies, magical creatures and monsters. Locals got accustomed to its eccentricities, and tourists come specifically to see the wild forest and try their luck with fairies. What if they can make their dreams come true? They should know better. Fairies of Fairfold aren’t known for kindness, and they won’t do anything for "thank you". People disappear, lose their minds, or their life passes in an instant. But this doesn’t happen with the residents of Fairfold, they’ve been living in peace with fairies for a long time. But that was before.



In the depths of the forest lies a glass coffin with a boy with horns. He has pointed ears and an inhuman beauty. He is immersed in eternal sleep, and no one was able to wake him up yet. He became a tourist attraction; they were coming from all over the world to see this miracle. For residents of Fairfold, he’s a favorite topic. All of them have some feelings for him, for he is their inspiration. They tell him their deepest secrets and share their feelings. But our heroes like him more that anyone.

Hazel and Ben have always been off-the-wall -- as far as it’s possible in a town like Fairfold. In their youth, their parents were irresponsible and liked partying, not caring about their hungry children. Therefore, they found a fun way to pass the time. The kids liked to imagine themselves as heroes, saving stupid people from creepy monsters, lurking in the woods. Ben could conjure any beast with his music, and Hazel had known from her childhood - she is destined to become a knight. Children became a nightmare of forest creatures. In their fantasies, they saw themselves as knights and faithful servants of the boy with horns -- their prince.

Of running all the way to where the horned boy slept, singing songs and making up stories about him all afternoon, only coming home at night, exhausted, wild animals returning to a den.
They saw themselves as children of the forest, creeping around pools and hiding in the hollows of dead trees.



But the older they grew, the more dangerous became their entertainment. One day, after another hunt for monsters that almost resulted in Hazel`s death, Ben refused to play in knights anymore. He believed that his musical skills were not high enough to protect them. Hazel, in desperation, made a deal with fairies to help her brother and promised to pay seven years of her life. But how? Maybe she's just going to die prematurely? Or she will be taken to the fairies, where time goes faster, and her life will fly by unnoticed? Oh, none of her theories could prepare her for the truth.

Now the kids became teens and stopped playing knights. Hazel grew a young woman, who breaks hearts and kisses with strangers at parties. Ben struggles to find his love and to stop playing music. And all would have been good if it were not for the terrible events in Fairfold. Fairies started to attack. The worst forest monster went into town and made people so sad, that they could literary die from sorrow. The boy with horns... woke up.



Then Hazel gets the message that it's time to pay her debts, her sword gets lost, and in the morning she wakes up with dirty feet and leaves in her hair - with absolutely no recollection of the previous night. Ben and his sister decide to look for their prince – to become knights again - but the boy they find is not the boy from their tales. At the same time, their best friend, Jack - who is a changeling, taken into a human family - starts to behave strangely and gets close with his people - and I'm not talking about human people.
Will the guys save the town from the monster? Will they solve the mystery of the horned boy and find their calling? Believe me, you want to find out about this!

The story goes, basically, from Hazel`s POV, but sometimes we can read on behalf of Ben and Jack. The word that comes to mind when I think about this girl is «badass». She is fearless, smart, weird and faithful. Most of all I liked to read the chapters about her childhood. I could imagine this wild child, wandering barefoot through the woods with a sword in her hand and with red lips from berry juice. Being a knight, her defining feature is courage. In those moments when I would do something like this:

She would go like this:


The book has a gay couple, Ben and... I won`t tell :) And the romance between Hazel and... I won`t tell :)
But it is these love stories that seemed out of place to me. They were boring and added nothing to the story. I did not feel the chemistry between the characters. But I loved the relationship between siblings; they were like Hansel and Gretel.

What in this book deserves the highest praise is a writing style! I swear, it was the best that I’ve seen this year. I fell in love with it from the first page. The story was very atmospheric and reminded of the classic tale. Thanks to the detailed descriptions, I could easily imagine a wild forest with monsters, lurking in the shadows, waiting for their prey. Hell, I even dreamed about coming to this town, despite the fact that all the tourists suffer from fairies’ tricks.



They are twilight creatures, beings of dawn and dusk, of standing between one thing and another, of not quite and almost, of borderlands and shadows.

So why did I rate it with three stars? The plot, guys. The plot. Firstly, it was very chaotic. In the beginning we read the chapters about the children’s past and present. And if at first I wondered why this prehistory is so vague and long, then later I realized that it was the best part of the book. Well, I also liked the ending. By the middle of the book, the storyline began to emerge, but it seemed poor in comparison with such an elegant and atmospheric writing. For example, the horned prince, he had so much potential! But, in the end, his character remained unsolved and quite banal, and only his horns were memorable. The monster had the same situation; it started smartly, scenes with him were plush and truly frightening - but his problem was so easily solved, that was somehow boring. IMHO, the plot needed to be more epic and dynamic. As I said, the ending was also good, but it can not be compared to the beginning, where there was no plot, only the fantastic atmosphere.

Overall, this is a great fairytale, written in style of the Grimm Brothers. I recommend it to those who, like me, loves to read about the dark forests full of monsters. And to those who liked Beware The Wild.



Once, there was a girl who found a sword in the woods.
Once, there was a girl who made a bargain with the Folk.
Once, there was a girl who’d been a knight in the service of a monster.
Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself.
Once, there was a girl…

*This beautiful fan art was made by my dear friend geborn-zu-sterben