First published 2024
Veris Thorn has done the impossible once before. She walked into the forest at the northern edge of the land and came back out alive. No one else has managed that. Now the foreign tyrant who controls her people has lost his children inside those trees, and he wants them returned. He wants Veris to do it. She has one day. The forest is not a place that rewards hesitation or mistakes. It runs on old magic, the kind that sets traps and wears familiar faces. Monsters live there. So do memories, and they are not always easier to face than the monsters. Veris knows what she is walking back into. She goes anyway, because the alternative is worse. Every step forward is a calculation. Every shadow could be a trick or a test. The children are somewhere inside, if they are still alive, and Veris has to find them and get everyone out before the forest closes around her for good. Premee Mohamed, who has won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, builds a dark fairytale around a woman who carries the weight of survival and the cost of being the only person capable of doing what no one should have to do twice.
Genres: adventure, fantasy, horror, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, haunting, suspenseful
Tropes: chosen-one, impossible-odds, internal-conflict, return-to-danger
Setting: the forest, northern edge of the land
160 pages · Paperback · Tor.com
Content warnings: death, violence