Though the fear never quite left them, with the darkness only a walk away and the echoes that haunted the night so close. Trees stood watch around the village edge like silent sentries, their darkness a solid thing, broken only by one thin winding path that led through the stoic boughs.
Carve the bones. One for the gate, one for the door, two for the mantel, and three for the floor… Hyacinth Turning knows the terrors beyond her village, the insatiable hunger of the Teeth. She listens to the sermons given by the Elders in their hare-skin masks. She watches as the heathens hang and the witches burn. They tell her to be good and quiet. But Hyacinth is neither good nor quiet. After a series of tragic events, Hyacinth finds herself hastily wedded and sent far away from all she has ever known to a settlement at the edge of the sea. Where more than just the Teeth are hungry. Another horror swims below, leviathan shadows kept at bay by offerings of flesh and bone.
But no sooner does Hyacinth take root in her new home do the Teeth and the Deep come to feed. Suspicion soon falls upon the outspoken Hyacinth, who spends more time with the outcasted Morgan Carroway than her own husband. The Elders want her burned, her husband wants her hanged, and a long-lost love claws at her dreams, but Hyacinth only wants one thing. A life and death of her choosing.
Amazon | Quill & Crow Publishing
I received a digital arc and I’m providing a review.
To begin with… The vibes. THE VIBES!
Every single moment of this book is dripping in deliciously unnerving folk horror vibes. One thing I can say for certain is that “The Bone Drenched Wood” (lovingly nicknamed “Where the Bones Boned” by me in a sleepy moment trying to describe the immaculate vibed to my husband) has a perfectly and skillfully crafted atmosphere that snakes like an eery fog throughout the entire novel.
Russell knows how to write a book. She knows how to carefully craft and distill horror in a way that shows her pure skill with language. She also knows how to tap into very real terror and delicately weave that throughout her novel to create a beautiful but absolutely unnerving tapestry of a story.
For me, I immediately thought of the M. Night Shyamalan film, “The Village,” especially the isolated village with spooky shenanigans going on, but with the folk horror turned up to 11.
Though, Bryce Dallas Howard’s Ivy Walker was more likeable than our FMC, Hyacinth Turning. Hyacinth walks the fine line between likeable and unlikeable, clever and foolish, feisty and down-right mean. To be fair, the world she lives in is incredibly harsh and horrific, but I had trouble deciding if I was rooting for Hyacinth in certain parts of the book. Personally, I would’ve loved to see a longer introduction of her character to get a better understanding of her free-spirited character.
We were thrown a little too quickly into the plot, which meant that I didn’t get to know Hyacinth’s character until she was in pure survival mode. I think a slower build opening would’ve also allowed for more establishment of the world the audience finds ourselves in.
This world is full of terror. I mean, them woods be bone DRENCHED. As I was reading, I felt like I was on a rollercoaster in the dark. I never knew what was going to happen or what terrors were lurking on the edges of the pages. It was a lot of fun, but I also craved to know more.
There were tiny tiny hints of the world beyond the Deep and the Teeth, but even within our isolated situation I felt like the lore of the land was mysterious… for better or worse.
The rituals throughout the book gave glimpses into the folklore surrounding them, but at the same time, I wanted to know more about the history. Questions I found myself coming back to were: Is this how it’s always been? Is this how it always will be? What lies beyond? Is there even a beyond?
None of my questions were answered.
And this was clearly a creative choice, continuing the conjuring of these amazing vibes by leaving the audience feeling just as claustrophobic and lost as the villagers themselves. That doesn’t mean it didn’t leave me feeling somewhat unsatisfied.
Russell also crafted a purely imaginative cast of characters to populate Hyacinth’s world with her. Everyone felt very real and solid as I was reading, even if I was somewhat horrified by their actions most of the time. Some of the villagers felt as if they could’ve been plucked right out of colonial New England at the height of the witch hunts. The question of who was actually trustworthy was always on my mind.
But, another thing that left me a little unsatisfied, was that the motivations of many of our main characters, even Hyacinth herself, were a little muddled in my opinion. Of course, everyone was just trying to survive, but there were moments when I found myself asking, “why is this happening?”
Another moment I found myself asking that question was at the end.
Abruptly we were thrown into the climax. It felt like there was this long period of trudging through existence in the village of horrors then suddenly everything was happening all at once. While it was a wild ride, I felt like it was a little rushed and I didn’t have time to process what had just happened when something else happened.
The very end seemed like it should’ve been a full circle moment. It made a certain amount of sense for the way the book began, but I felt like, as much as there were certain moments of foreshadowing, it felt like it wasn’t built up to enough.
Maybe it’s because the pacing needed some adjustment. Certain moments, especially those of great emotional tension, seemed a little rushed from my point of view. I felt like I never quite grasped what was going on.
Of course, this is clearly a creative choice made by Russell, trying to craft the story into the vibes, but to a certain extent a reader does need to feel like they know what’s going on while they’re reading.
This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the book. I enjoyed immensely! Russell is very talented and I’m excited to read more of her work.
If you like a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants folk horror, reminiscent of “The Village” but with better supernatural elements, you’ll really enjoy “The Bone Drenched Woods.”
Jenna Goldsmith 