The story of a witch past her prime, proving that the most compelling magic is the stubborn will to protect what you’ve built.
A Forest Darkly by A.G. Slatter: A Witch’s Story for Grown-Ups
Walking the same path every day, you stop seeing the individual trees. They blur into a green wall, a background to your thoughts. A.G. Slatter’s A Forest, Darkly does the opposite. It forces you to see each trunk, each root, each shadowed hollow in its dark, fairy-tale woods. It’s a story that understands magic isn’t about flashy bursts of light, but about the slow, stubborn persistence of growth in rotten places. The quiet magic of survival.
The novel centres on Mehrab, a witch whose life is past its supposed prime. She is menopausal, settled into the grinding rhythms of a solitary cottage life, her power woven into the daily tasks of mending bones and brewing remedies. Her peace is fractured by two arrivals: Rhea, a young woman fleeing fanatical hunters, and a creeping dread from a nearby village where children are vanishing. Slatter, a master of dark fantasy, uses this not for a simple chase but to examine the weight of a life lived differently. This is a story about protection, legacy, and the exhausting, necessary work of building a family from the scraps the world leaves behind.
The book’s core triumph is Mehrab herself. In a genre crowded with young heroines discovering power, Mehrab’s strength is seasoned, hard-won, and deeply relatable. She is pragmatic, often grumpy, and profoundly tired. Her magic is less about wonder and more about utility, a tool for survival and a burden she manages. This perspective is the novel’s beating heart. Watching her cautiously open her hardened life to protect Rhea provides a profound emotional anchor. Their evolving relationship, this found family, feels earned through shared fear and small, domestic acts of care, not destined by prophecy.
Slatter’s world-building operates with this same textured, lived-in quality. The forest is a true character, teeming with folklore creatures and ancient rules. Concepts like the “summer husband”, a magical construct for labour and companionship, are brilliantly inventive, speaking volumes about loneliness and need with a single, eerie detail.
The tension is expertly layered. The supernatural threat of the forest is palpable, but the human threat from the suspicious village is often more chilling. Mehrab exists in that precarious space between resource and scapegoat, a position Slatter explores with grim realism. The atmosphere she builds is a unique alloy: part cosy cottage-core, part deep, gothic horror. You feel the warmth of the hearth and the chill of the eyes watching from the wood.
For all its considerable power, the book’s pacing follows its own deliberate rhythm. The initial establishment of Mehrab’s isolation is meticulous, prioritising mood and character interiority over plot momentum. This builds a strong sense of place and psyche, but the central mystery of the missing children occasionally loses urgency, becoming a slow-burning ember rather than a driving flame. The narrative trusts the reader to invest in Mehrab’s daily reality, which is commendable, but it requires patience.
The prose, lush and intentionally folkloric, is generally a strength. However, in its pursuit of a timeless, lyrical quality, it can sometimes become dense. A handful of sentences feel overly crafted, where the weight of the language momentarily obscures the clarity of the image or action. It’s a minor friction in an otherwise rich stylistic fabric, a reminder that such a distinctive voice walks a fine line.
Slatter’s writing style is not fluid or gauzy. It has substance and grain. Reading it feels less like watching a movie and more like examining a detailed woodblock print. Each line is carved with sharp intention, the images clear and stark, leaving rich impressions of shadow and texture. She uses a close third-person perspective that never leaves Mehrab’s side, making the world feel filtered through her knowledgeable, weary senses. The language is active and physical; you smell the damp earth and drying herbs, feel the heft of an axe, and sense the wrongness in a quiet grove. This stylistic commitment fully immerses you in her reality.
A Distinct Mark on the Genre
In a landscape of witchy books, what does this one do differently? It trades the adrenaline of self-discovery for the deeper, more complex gravity of endurance. It’s a story about what happens after the tale supposedly ends, about managing the long-term consequences of power and otherness. Its relevance is in its mature perspective, defiantly centring a character whose wisdom is etched by failure and time, not gifted by destiny.
It successfully blends genres, marrying the intimate, comforting frame of a cottage-hermit narrative with genuine folk horror stakes. It proves that a story can be both quiet and unsettling, focused on small domesticities while grappling with vast, ancient fears. It stands as a robust, standalone dark fantasy that doesn’t need a series to feel complete, offering a satisfying, resonant arc about choosing connection in a world designed to make you choose safety.
The book leaves you with a specific, lingering thought. Not about monsters or magic, but about doors. When you have spent years carefully building walls, furnishing a life of chosen solitude, what kind of courage does it take to finally, reluctantly, turn the key and let someone in?
A Forest Darkly by A.G. Slatter
Perfect for fans of Ava Reid and Lucy Holland, this is a page-turning dark fantasy of persecuted witches, snatched children, twisted magic, changelings and the sins that bind.
Set in the multi-award-winning author’s acclaimed Sourdough universe, this standalone story sits alongside previous novels, including All the Murmuring Bones and The Briar Book of the Dead.
Deep in the forest lives Mehrab the witch, quietly battling her demons. One evening, a young woman arrives at her door pursued by god-hounds, who wish to destroy all those practising magic, and Mehrab’s solitary existence is disrupted. Together they forge a cure for their isolation with heartbreaking consequences… Meanwhile, in the local village, children begin to disappear. Sinister offerings appear on Mehrab’s doorstep, and a dark power pursues her through the trees. As the villagers turn hostile and the god-hounds close in, Mehrab finds herself at the centre of a struggle to save the soul of the forest, the life of an old love – and her own new-formed family.
Set in Slatter’s bewitching gothic Sourdough universe, this is a haunting, gripping tale written with wit and heart. A book to both savour and devour.
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