Tag: forest

Read For the Wolf

As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose-to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he’ll return the world’s captured gods.

Red is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can’t control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can’t hurt those she loves. Again.

But the legends lie. The Wolf is a man, not a monster. Her magic is a calling, not a curse. And if she doesn’t learn how to use it, the monsters the gods have become will swallow the Wilderwood-and her world-whole.

Gnarly ending, but fitting. Parts felt YAish, probably because the heroine and her sister are twenty and blindingly dumb sometimes. I had to roll my eyes at the sister a lot — for someone trained to be queen, she is pretty oblivious. The magic system is cool and creepy and very bloody. I like the way the forest itself gets an arc. It’s a good Beauty and the beast retelling, though a weird choice to put so much weight in story on the red cloak, and to put it on the cover, so you expect it to be riding hood 🤷‍♀️

Tags 2021, Beauty and the Beast, book, fairy tales, forest, Hannah Whitten, magic

Comics History Nature

Read The Great North Wood

Read The Great North Wood

Long ago the whole of Southern England was covered in forest. Over time, this woodland has been gradually cut back, but small patches remain amidst the suburban sprawl of South-East London. A few ancient oaks still stand in the gaps between housing estates, alongside railway lines and acting as boundary markers on roundabouts. The magic that once filled the ancient forest can still be felt even when the trees are long gone. Memories of the Great North Wood are recorded in the place names – Forest Hill, Honour Oak, Norwood. Stories are told of the bandits, outlaws and gypsies that once roamed the forest, and their presence can sometimes be sensed when the hum of the city is quiet. Tim Bird’s longest work to date continues his interest in psychogeography and how memories live on in the landscape.

This was an odd collection of brief comics about the loss of the Great North Woods to the south of London, and specific places and trees that used to be important. It’s a remembrance of what was, and a recognition of the special nature of old growth forests, though it didn’t quite come together for me as more than the sum of its parts.

The joke is that housing developments are named after what they destroyed, which holds true in England as well. It’s on the one hand sad to recognize the habitat lost, but on the other it’s a small memory of history. The vignettes of specific places were interesting.

What makes me saddest about the loss of forests like this is that people didn’t recognize the value of what they had, and squandered it – old growth forest going to make charcoal *shudder* At least in buildings it lasts a long time.

I can only hope that five hundred years from now we’ll have saved new old growth forests for people who live then.