GODS OF THE WYRDWOOD (Forsaken #1), by R.J. Barker

I received this novel from Orbit Books, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.

Once again RJ Barker has crafted a unique world that simply asks you to lose yourself in it, and this time around it’s been even easier to do so because the world – or rather its huge living forest – is an intriguingly complex and also dangerous one.  Crua is home to a vast forest system that becomes ever more perilous the deeper one goes through it; wood is indeed the ruling element in this world where everything comes from trees: soldiers’ armor is made from wood, water is obtained from special vines, there is even a kind of floating vine that allows the easy transportation of heavy loads. But the forest unlocks its secrets reluctantly and going deeper into it – into the titular Wyrdwood – means that one might never be seen again.

Cahan du Nahere is a forester, a man deeply attuned to the woods he knows well, careful in taking only what he needs without succumbing to needless greed. He lives a solitary life on his farm, dealing with the memories of a painful past: when he was a child, he was trained by the high priest of the god Zorir to become its chosen one, but on Crua gods come and go with appalling ease and once a new god’s faith swept the land, Cahan was forced to hide from the winner’s acolytes.  His quiet existence is soon upended when his clanless status and rumors of his past put him once again under the spotlight, threatening his survival.  The chance encounter with Udinny, a delightfully outspoken monk and with Venn, a troubled youngster running from an uncertain destiny, will force Cahan to leave behind his cloak of anonymity and take an active part in the turmoil sweeping across the land.

It would hardly be a stretch to say that the world’s huge forests are more of a central character than the humans themselves. Crua is a harsh world, and a divided one – not just where politics are concerned (although ruthless power play is a recurring theme), but in a very physical sense, because of its axial tilt that condemns the north, where the action is set, to an endless winter, while the south enjoys a more balmy climate.  And the forests represent much of the uncharted territories of this world, where plants and animal life act often as deadly predators; despite this terrifying prospect, these forests hold the reader’s attention through their aura of mystery: the part of the story where Cahan and Udinny venture deeply into the woods in search of a lost child is one of the more spellbinding in this first volume of the saga – we learn, though the awestruck eyes of Udinny, of the perils and the wonders of this world-within-a-world, of the many forms of trees, bushes and flowers and of the creatures that thrive in there, and the readers can share in Udinny’s fascination as the picture of this living, variegated forest takes shape and texture through the brilliant, cinematic descriptions.

The societal system is equally intriguing, despite the bleak living conditions described – and despite the fact that there are a number of details that get little or no explanation, and that require the readers to pay close attention, since the author does not waste any time in reader hand-holding: if village life is no picnic on Crua, to be clanless means finding oneself at the very bottom of the social scale, with no means of defense or hope of help should dire need present itself. The family units are structured around group marriages, where two or three couples bond raising the children together and often include a trion, a genderless person acting as a bridge between the various spouses.  And then there are the Rai, elite soldiers (or rather, shock troops) enhanced by the presence of a cowl: this is the greatest mystery I encountered because very little is explained about cowls – they sound like symbiotic creatures that enhance the strength and the offensive and recuperative powers of the people they are connected to, but they also require a constant stream of energy that comes from the (mostly horrifying) death of chosen victims, conferring a shade of ruthless cruelty to the Rai.  Still, I’m wondering about what cowls truly are, where they came from and so on, and I hope that the next books will shed more light on this detail.

As far as the characters are concerned, Cahan represents a mystery that is revealed in small increments through the second-person flashbacks interspersed between chapters: at first I wondered at what looked like his passive nature – when the local authorities grant the use of his property to a family of farmers, his rights being non-existent due to his clanless state, he gives in with appalling ease – but little by little I learned of his constant battle with the cowl he was gifted by Zorir’s priesthood, and with his refusal to give in to the cowl’s demands which would lead to violence and death. The cowl’s constant intrusion in his thoughts, its relentless “You need me” as soon as Cahan finds himself in dire straits, made me think of the lure of drugs for an addict, the endless tug-of-war between cravings and willpower, and put into sharper focus the man’s character and the wounds of his past. 

Udinny could easily be Cahan’s polar opposite: talkative and open, eager to experience the world and totally given to the path of her goddess Ranya, who represents a sort of unifying spirit present in all living creatures. I enjoyed her constant questions as she and Cahan moved through the forest in their search of a missing child, and how she did her best to bring the man out of his self-imposed shell of silence and aloofness. It would not be too far from the truth to say that Udinny is a very welcome ray of sunshine in the overall bleakness of the story, and in this regard I have to admit that Gods of the Wyrdwood presents us with a far grimmer world than RJ Barker’s previous ones, which is an unusual feat considering how dark they were.

And lastly there is Venn, the young trion whose mother, a highly placed official, put in the unenviable position of being a cowled emissary of the current god. The young man, though, constantly refuses to give in to the violence necessary to bond with his cowl and it’s clear that he’s still suffering from PTSD from the experience she put him through when he was “gifted” with it. That nightmarish event informs his character in such a way that he’s able to resist the pressures exerted on him (and here I have to say that I completely despised his mother for what she put him through) until he discovers that a cowl is not always an instrument of death… 

Where the story builds with something of a leisurely stroll, which includes Cahan’s and Udinny’s long journey through the forest, the last third of the novel moves with a hectic pace in preparation for an event that kept me on edge until its final resolution. The various narrative threads merge into an epic battle in which the themes of rebellion against injustice and prevarication meet those of friendship and found family that have been one of the strongest elements in previous RJ Barker stories. And while that epic battle was equally thrilling and heart-stopping, the final twist at the end of the novel left me both shocked for its unexpected revelation and eager for the next book in the series.  One I look forward to with great enthusiasm.

My Rating: