Where the Woods End

July 1, 2018

Gr 6-10-Deep in a nightmarish forest, scrappy Kestrel defends her isolated village from monsters, armed with a spoon, a book, and her talking weasel sidekick. This action-packed novel has plenty of twists, the biggest of which is the psychological insight into its protagonist. Kestrel's search-and-destroy mentality initially seems like a dark inversion of Pokémon, channeling a "gotta kill them all" mentality. But Kestrel is mostly after Grabbers, who steal mementos to create bodies that embody their victim's worst fear. Kestrel survives because her fears are so complex: she struggles to reinterpret her mother and grandmother's abuse as hero training and her father's abandonment as protection. While Kestrel's exciting but simplistic monster hunts seem to empower her, they also make her an outcast from the village she seeks to protect. She can only free herself when she turns inward, to challenge her mother and her own punishing self-narrative. Although Kestrel, her family, the monsters, and the forest are intensely realized, the villagers and the village feel generic. The Salty Bog and the Marrow Orchard are viscerally terrifying, but stray references to museums and dentists threaten to break the spell. VERDICT Gorier than Gaiman, this novel is not for the faint of heart but packs a surprising emotional punch. Buy where complex horror-fantasy for young teens is in demand.-Katherine Magyarody, Texas A&M University, College Station

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2018
Grades 4-7 Even in an endless forest full of monsters, Kestrel is an outcast. The people of her village are hunted by Grabbers?a Grabber shapes itself like a person's greatest fear and steals them away forever?and Kestrel, trained by her ferocious grandmother, hunts them. But now her grandmother is gone, snatched away by her own Grabber, and Kestrel takes her orders from her spell-casting mother, who uses the villagers' teeth to hurt them and sends a great black dog to do her bidding. The villagers fear Kestrel's mother and hate Kestrel, despite the fact that she's trying to help them. With her trusty, wacky weasel by her side, Kestrel ventures out into the woods. But there's more going on here than she knows, and she will need everything she's ever learned about monsters?and how to fight them?if she's to find a way out. Salter (The Bone Snatcher, 2017) has created a murky, dangerous world where nothing is as it seems. Hand to readers who like their plots action-packed, their monsters fanged, and their fairy tales dark.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2019
Trained by her abusive mum and grandmother to fight the monsters that live in their macabre forest, twelve-year-old Kestrel is helpless to stop the "grabber" that kills her father; then Kestrel discovers signs that a grabber is after her. The action moves at a disorientingly rapid pace through a setting rife with nightmarish hazards and carefully calibrated horror to deliver a disquieting, morbidly fascinating tale.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2018

Gr 6-10-Deep in a nightmarish forest, scrappy Kestrel defends her isolated village from monsters, armed with a spoon, a book, and her talking weasel sidekick. This action-packed novel has plenty of twists, the biggest of which is the psychological insight into its protagonist. Kestrel's search-and-destroy mentality initially seems like a dark inversion of Pok�mon, channeling a "gotta kill them all" mentality. But Kestrel is mostly after Grabbers, who steal mementos to create bodies that embody their victim's worst fear. Kestrel survives because her fears are so complex: she struggles to reinterpret her mother and grandmother's abuse as hero training and her father's abandonment as protection. While Kestrel's exciting but simplistic monster hunts seem to empower her, they also make her an outcast from the village she seeks to protect. She can only free herself when she turns inward, to challenge her mother and her own punishing self-narrative. Although Kestrel, her family, the monsters, and the forest are intensely realized, the villagers and the village feel generic. The Salty Bog and the Marrow Orchard are viscerally terrifying, but stray references to museums and dentists threaten to break the spell. VERDICT Gorier than Gaiman, this novel is not for the faint of heart but packs a surprising emotional punch. Buy where complex horror-fantasy for young teens is in demand.-Katherine Magyarody, Texas A&M University, College Station

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2018
"The endless forest was as dark as the back of a wolf's throat." So begins this terrifying tale of bravery, magic, and lies.Within this infinite forest sits a village. Kestrel, 12, is the most hated person in this village, but the stalwart young hunter is the community's only hope against the deadly grabbers, grotesque creatures that appear as their victims' worst fears before devouring them. No one survives a grabber attack, not even Kestrel's grandmother, the most fearsome hunter in the history of the forest, who trained Kestrel to push aside her fear and "deal with it later." Kestrel dreams of escape; there must be a better life beyond the woods. However, her mother keeps Kestrel trapped with dark magic. She has the baby teeth of every villager, and when Kestrel disobeys, she punishes her daughter by magical proxy, grievously injuring someone else, but she'll release Kestrel if she kills her grandmother's grabber. Armed with a sharpened spoon (a brilliantly subverted symbol of submissive female domesticity) and accompanied by Pippit, a talking weasel, Kestrel braves the carnivorous Marrow Orchard, where body parts grow on bloody trees; makes a deal with the omniscient Briny Witch (who is male); and struggles with guilt over her role in her grandmother's death. Kestrel's earthy determination grounds readers as they navigate the myriad spooky details, braving even what makes her "guts shrivel." The book adheres to the white default.Deliciously shivery. (Fantasy. 8-13)

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