After the Forest by Kell Woods Review

Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour. A drop of blood to bind its power.
 

1650: The Black Forest, Wurttemberg.
 

Fifteen 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 recovering in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in her ear, and the recipe inside that makes the most sinfully delicious - and addictive - gingerbread.
 

As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat. But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her intoxicating gingerbread is a source of ever-growing suspicion and vicious gossip.
 

And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta's own powers - magic she is still trying to understand - may be the only thing that can save her ... If it doesn't kill her first.
 

A stunning meld of love story, fairytale, magic and history, by an exciting debut Australian voice - perfect for fans of Naomi Novik, Bridget Collins and Kate Forsyth

Part Grimm fairytale retelling, part historical fiction, and finally part original fantasy story revolving around witchcraft, Kell Woods’s debut novel After the Forest is an expansive dark fantasy book with an ambitious narrative to tell. Rather than directly retelling its source material, After the Forest instead follows the difficult life of Greta following her and her brother’s experiences trapped by a witch and her gingerbread house. A tense story filled with distrust and suspicions in a rural village, contrary to its classification as a retelling, Woods’s story is largely an original one that merely uses Hansel and Gretel’s fairytale for contextual framework. Creatively constructed with fitting prose, this book was a case of expecting one thing and getting something entirely different that wasn’t for me but was nonetheless an intriguing read outside of its frequent issues of pacing and unfocused plot.

Books classified as retellings tend to follow one of two different scenarios that largely determine how the story will be read. The traditional form of retelling is one that mostly retells the original story with a unique spin, modernization, genre-swap, or similar. The other form uses the base story as a launching point for framework purposes only and uses the preexisting characters or lore to do something entirely new (in my opinion isn’t a “retelling” but that’s for another discussion some other time). After the Forest falls into the latter camp where Woods poses the question of what happened to Hansel and Gretel after they escaped from their near-death experience in the forest. Fast-forwarding about 10-12 years, Woods’s take on the material is one of tense distrust, conflict, and a surprisingly very original story.

The Grimm fairytale of Hansel and Gretel is a short and concise one whose simplicity interestingly leaves a lot of room for reinterpretation. Woods retains the original premise of Hansel and Gretel but gives it a substantial amount of new context which presents a plausible explanation for many of the original story’s basic elements. Why were they abandoned in the forest by their parents, left in mortal danger? Why were they lured by a witch who only caged Hansel and wanted to eat him? How was an entire house of gingerbread made and what was its purpose? Woods’s answer to all those questions is witchcraft and dark forms of magic. And that poses problems for Woods’ main character Greta who lives in a village suspicious and distrusting of all forms of magic, the story’s gravity and tension growing as new visitors and strange occurrences continue to disrupt the rural status quo.

One of the book’s most noteworthy and double-edged aspects is Woods’s wide variety of ideas and concepts pulled from across the different areas of the fantasy genre. While the original story of Hansel and Gretel had relatively little “fantasy” elements apart from the evil witch and her gingerbread house, After the Forest has an expansive story including different forms of witchcraft magic, grimoires, curses, visions, and wolves/bears (this one felt particularly random to me). On top of the fantasy elements, the novel also has notable historical fiction elements via the story being set in 1650 Württemberg rather than the generic timeless fairytale approach. The story references and revolves around the aftermath of the historic Thirty Years’ War and the instability it left on the common village people. Woods takes the concept even further by casting some of her original characters within the war’s conflict as well as using it for narrative context in the latter half of the book. The book’s blurb mentions its setting and connection to the war, but I was surprised by the historical context of the story which took me a while to follow and understand as I’m not personally well-versed in that era of European history.

While the story is creative and ambitious conceptually, I often felt like the plot was unfocused and had too many ingredients and storylines that were competing for time and focus. For most of the read, I struggled to stay invested and I had no idea what the story was supposed to be or where it was going, things just happening with seemingly little relevance to each other. Side storylines such as the wolves and a group pack witch associate(?), while interesting in concept, seemed more like a lengthy tangent that interrupted the flow and trajectory of the story Greta’s childhood story. Other elements like the historic Thirty Year War involving the Habsburgs and Protestant/Catholic differences were interesting but underdeveloped to the point where it likely could’ve been axed for a more cohesive and simpler story. The historical context and the threat of the wolves in particular are two of the most prominent storylines that contribute to the book’s slow and fragmented first 150 pages. It takes a relatively long time for Greta’s role in the story to take shape as well as both the book’s fantasy and fairytale retelling elements to come into play.

While I wouldn’t say After the Forest is overwritten per se, I do feel that the book comes off as being very slow and inconsistent with its pacing due to the story’s unfocused nature. Woods does a great job at portraying the tense atmosphere fitting for a fantasy story adjacent to the dark forest nearby, but the various elements don’t often feel like they complement each other despite narratively fitting once the book reaches its conclusion. The villain of the story and their connection to Greta is revealed at such a late point in the story that it feels like the first 350 pages were severely mismanaged. I started enjoying and getting into the book when it was on-topic with its retelling source material as well as its witchcraft story, but there was too much off-topic content going on for my liking and the story took too long to show how each different element fits into the overarching plot.

The other area that’s difficult to quantify is the story’s characters. Likely in an effort to portray the town’s animosity to Greta as well as casting an adult take on classic fairytale characters, the personalities in After the Forest have the unfortunate tendency to all seem unlikable. Portrayed as being heavily flawed to highlight the book’s themes of xenophobia and misogyny, nearly every single character is awful to Greta constantly. I was initially on-board with this as it fits the narrative of the book and is an effective way of presenting Greta as being an outsider within the only home she and Hans have ever known. However, over the course of nearly 500 pages, this gets repetitive and old. The book’s characters being inherently unlikable are exacerbated by the way Woods writes them, having little redeeming qualities and notably lacking shades of gray or nuance. Just about everyone Greta encounters are portrayed unpleasantly, some like Conran being a caricature of all things immoral to the point of hilarity. Others like Hans (Hansel) are portrayed with PTSD destructive behavior and reckless abandonment which is a great choice on paper, but the execution is all stereotypically toxic and jerk-like behavior. This is a notable issue when a big part of Greta’s personal mission is ensuring her brother’s safety and well-being, which is quite difficult to get behind given Hans’s irredeeming qualities and constantly throwing her under the bus. Across the board, just about every male character is detestable and the characterizations are heavy-handed; Matthias can do no wrong except for keeping secrets from Greta (in a pessimistic mindset, this novel almost comes off like an angry feminist read for how terrible the men in the story are). On the flip side, though Greta is portrayed as being a resilient and adaptable survivor in the face of adversity, her reactions and behavior cycle between being shocked at new developments or being harshly judgmental of others (an irony considering others are also judgmental against her). Her character is in a constant state of surprise, betrayal and emotional tears, which isn’t inherently a blackmark on its own, but feels worse considering the book’s length and wayward story. One’s enjoyment with this book will largely hinge on whether the reader connects and supports Greta’s characters or is into the plot; I unfortunately didn’t care for either.

While conceptually interesting and very ambitious with its fairytale retelling, After the Forest is an above dark fantasy book on paper dragged down by its presentation. Although Woods is clearly a competent and imaginative writer, the story felt too scattered and the pacing far too slow to hold my attention despite my normal preference for slow burn narratives. The book also sits in a bit of an odd place where I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be a YA or an adult novel; its themes and dark take on Hansel and Gretel feeling like it wants to be an adult novel while its dialogue and romance element coming off as very YA instead. I didn’t enjoy reading this at any point in the story and only continued out of vague curiosity to see where it would go, yet I must commend the creativity and effort that clearly went into crafting this otherwise very original story. That said, I am more than willing to give Woods’s other books a shot (I own a copy Upon a Starlit Tide that’s in my TBR) as most of my issues with this novel had to do with its characters and use of the source material, not her writing style. While not for me personally, this is a good choice for those looking for a story with a variety of fantasy vignettes or those interested in paranoid villagers shunning magic.