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A review by thebookishmutant
Into the Heartless Wood by Joanna Ruth Meyer
4.0
TW/CW: blood, gore, child endangerment, suicide, torture, vehicle crash/derailment, war themes
Into the Heartless Wood was just something I picked up because I was in an extended fantasy mood for most of last week, but it blew me away at how emotional and heartbreakingly tender it was. I thought I’d given up on Beauty and the Beast retellings, but to be honest, I had no idea that this was a retelling until after I’d finished the whole thing, and maybe that’s what made it so memorable. All it stuck to was the central theme of the story—everything else was Joanna Ruth Meyer, and that everything else was beautiful.
This is more of a general statement on fantasy/supernatural romances in general, but it feels like every pairing in it ends up where the woman is human, and the man is the non-human creature or monster. It’s on most of the shirtless dude (but this time he’s a werewolf/vampire/etc.) romances that I see advertised, and it’s in a lot of popular YA fantasies. It’s always the king or prince of the fae that the otherwise practical human girl falls for. And even though it’s my favorite movie, The Shape of Water fits too. You get the idea. We hardly ever let women be monsters. Not to get real College with it, but there’s something to be said for the fact that we can’t stand to make women monsters—and therefore unattractive in some way—because otherwise, they wouldn’t be tidy little sex objects anymore. Women are hardly ever in the position of the monstrous character because a lot of writers can’t stand the thought of a woman’s characteristics or redemption arc not being tied to her beauty.
That’s part of why Into the Heartless Wood stood out to me so much. Something as simple as a gender-swap has done this novel an immense service. Seren, the tree-siren love interest, is monstrous in the basic sense, but her inner conflict and the history that led up to who she is was written in such a painfully tender way. Even if she wasn’t meant to be the love interest, you would still feel so deeply for her. The way that her POV chapters switched from verse to prose depending on her circumstances was so artfully subtle, and Meyer had no trouble navigating between the two, even as Seren herself struggled to separate herself from the woods. The conflict between Seren and her sisters, as well as the inner conflicts of her place in the world and the struggle to become something more than a pawn of her mother, made her not just fleshed-out, but a character I was rooting for from page one. (I always feel sympathetic towards the monsters, but the point still stands.) Owen was the perfect match for her—his sensitivity and fearful yearning for something beyond the ordinary fit Seren’s search for meaning beyond the wood perfectly.
The Kingdom of Tarian was also fleshed out just right! I’m assuming most of it was Welsh-inspired, judging from the names of places and characters, but I liked the integration of the industrial aspect of Tarian, and not automatically opting for a medieval setting, as most fantasies tend to do. (It’s all well and good, but it gets tiring once 95% of the high fantasy books you’ve read end up with the same setting with minor tweaks.) The industrialization enhanced the nature/mankind conflict that the novel sets up; from the beginning, there’s a stark contrast between the human world of steam trains and semi-modern warfare and the wood, with its wild, man-eating tree witches, and it made the central, generational conflict between the Witch of the Wood and the king of Tarian seem even more grave, even if the lives of both protagonists and their families weren’t at stake.
What wrapped all of this together was both the prose and verse of Joanna Ruth Meyer. Both ways, her writing was truly lyrical, achingly poetic in even the most fleeting of scenes. The emotion that was baked into the fiber of this story made the almost Romeo & Juliet-like romance of Owen and Seren feel all the more revolutionary—teenagers always feel like their love stories are what make the world go ’round, but Meyer made you believe every word of it and root for the lovers every step of the way. Every bit of both love and heartbreak was heartstring-tugging—there’s nothing like a story of lovers giving each other the courage to break away from the mold set by the world(s) around them. Works like a charm.
All in all, an achingly romantic and heartbreaking fantasy that had me hanging on every word. 4.5 stars!
Into the Heartless Wood was just something I picked up because I was in an extended fantasy mood for most of last week, but it blew me away at how emotional and heartbreakingly tender it was. I thought I’d given up on Beauty and the Beast retellings, but to be honest, I had no idea that this was a retelling until after I’d finished the whole thing, and maybe that’s what made it so memorable. All it stuck to was the central theme of the story—everything else was Joanna Ruth Meyer, and that everything else was beautiful.
This is more of a general statement on fantasy/supernatural romances in general, but it feels like every pairing in it ends up where the woman is human, and the man is the non-human creature or monster. It’s on most of the shirtless dude (but this time he’s a werewolf/vampire/etc.) romances that I see advertised, and it’s in a lot of popular YA fantasies. It’s always the king or prince of the fae that the otherwise practical human girl falls for. And even though it’s my favorite movie, The Shape of Water fits too. You get the idea. We hardly ever let women be monsters. Not to get real College with it, but there’s something to be said for the fact that we can’t stand to make women monsters—and therefore unattractive in some way—because otherwise, they wouldn’t be tidy little sex objects anymore. Women are hardly ever in the position of the monstrous character because a lot of writers can’t stand the thought of a woman’s characteristics or redemption arc not being tied to her beauty.
That’s part of why Into the Heartless Wood stood out to me so much. Something as simple as a gender-swap has done this novel an immense service. Seren, the tree-siren love interest, is monstrous in the basic sense, but her inner conflict and the history that led up to who she is was written in such a painfully tender way. Even if she wasn’t meant to be the love interest, you would still feel so deeply for her. The way that her POV chapters switched from verse to prose depending on her circumstances was so artfully subtle, and Meyer had no trouble navigating between the two, even as Seren herself struggled to separate herself from the woods. The conflict between Seren and her sisters, as well as the inner conflicts of her place in the world and the struggle to become something more than a pawn of her mother, made her not just fleshed-out, but a character I was rooting for from page one. (I always feel sympathetic towards the monsters, but the point still stands.) Owen was the perfect match for her—his sensitivity and fearful yearning for something beyond the ordinary fit Seren’s search for meaning beyond the wood perfectly.
The Kingdom of Tarian was also fleshed out just right! I’m assuming most of it was Welsh-inspired, judging from the names of places and characters, but I liked the integration of the industrial aspect of Tarian, and not automatically opting for a medieval setting, as most fantasies tend to do. (It’s all well and good, but it gets tiring once 95% of the high fantasy books you’ve read end up with the same setting with minor tweaks.) The industrialization enhanced the nature/mankind conflict that the novel sets up; from the beginning, there’s a stark contrast between the human world of steam trains and semi-modern warfare and the wood, with its wild, man-eating tree witches, and it made the central, generational conflict between the Witch of the Wood and the king of Tarian seem even more grave, even if the lives of both protagonists and their families weren’t at stake.
What wrapped all of this together was both the prose and verse of Joanna Ruth Meyer. Both ways, her writing was truly lyrical, achingly poetic in even the most fleeting of scenes. The emotion that was baked into the fiber of this story made the almost Romeo & Juliet-like romance of Owen and Seren feel all the more revolutionary—teenagers always feel like their love stories are what make the world go ’round, but Meyer made you believe every word of it and root for the lovers every step of the way. Every bit of both love and heartbreak was heartstring-tugging—there’s nothing like a story of lovers giving each other the courage to break away from the mold set by the world(s) around them. Works like a charm.
All in all, an achingly romantic and heartbreaking fantasy that had me hanging on every word. 4.5 stars!