The Wheel of Fortune: A Forest, Darkly

A Forest, Darkly is a fairytale. It is also a study in archetypes. Both storybook and allegory, it is a born classic.

Mehrab lives a solitary life. She ventures into the village to trade and sell her magical wares, but otherwise she remains alone. Her life is not one of involuntary exile; it is a self-elected separation. Mehrab is her own person — more specifically, her own woman. And that designation sets her apart.

Things begin to change when Mehrab takes in Rhea, a seventeen-year-old on the run after unintentionally committing murder with her fire magic. Meanwhile, the town's children begin to go missing, seemingly replaced by violent changelings. Mehrab and Rhea become mentor and mentee faced with a mystery. The tropes abound — and that is precisely the point.

Maiden. Mother. Crone. Changelings and the Wild Hunt. The making of a Green Man — guardian, assistant, and even lover. Slatter lays the old machinery out on the table without apology, and then — this is the trick — she makes you perceive it in a truly fresh way.

The novel is also a tour through the Major Arcana. Mehrab as the Hermit, who must return from her solitude in order to teach and to save. Rhea as the Magician's apprentice, learning the art of elemental balance. The Emperor seeking his Empress. The Devil. All of them caught within the Wheel of Fortune, turning and turning.

Yet, striking despite this circuit, is the characters' strange fixity. They learn and grow, fall and rise, evolve - but in essence, stay the same. So very human. And, most quietly, Slatter makes you perceive fortune — the wheel's promise of change — while Mehrab, Rhea, and the others remain unmistakably themselves. The archetypes are not cages; they are rooms that the characters live in, and in living, they change the rooms more than they themselves are altered. In A Forest, Darkly, the characters delicately shift the world. This is what an effective fairytale looks like: the old forms hold while new roots press forward, and this interplay between grip and growth makes the story.

The book is both verdant and dark. It is like the phases of the moon — the same landscape, the same people, lit differently from one chapter to the next, until you realize the light was always part of the scene. A.G. Slatter spins her tale beautifully.

Five stars. A reread, certainly — because the second time through, you will be watching the wheel instead of being carried by it.