Does the forest comfort or scare you? In literature, the woods are often portrayed as oases of freedom and clarity, where humans can shake off conformity and follow their natural instincts. But the woods can also be cautionary, a place to be wary of and avoid. Darker stories show the forest as a place of distortion and confusion. The books about magical forests on the list below feature a little bit of both. Come escape into the fronds as we cover the best books about magical forests.
This high-fantasy novel based on Polish folklore uses the fathomless forest to represent malevolence, corruption, and the creeping inevitability of evil. In the tale, a village girl named Agnieszka is singled out by a local wizard because of her natural magic abilities. He needs her to battle a mysterious force called the Wood that borders their homeland. When a beautiful local girl named Kasia, also Agnieszka's dearest friend, is threatened by the Wood, Agnieszka must face her fears before the trees take over.
In this sweeping work that touches on history, activism, resistance, and the natural world, Richard Powers intertwines the lives of nine people spanning from antebellum New York to the Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest in the second half of the 20th century. The characters are all connected by their unique relationships with trees and shared fight against deforestation. While not a magical read, its prose is enchanting and ambitious, having won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and 2020 William Dean Howells Medal.
In this classic from 1984, myth and terror wait deep in the forest. Ryhope Wood is Great Britain's last sliver of primeval forest. It was also the all-consuming obsession of a man named George Huxley who devoted his life to studying it. When his sons take up his work after his death, they learn the perilous truth about this labyrinth-like forest that is somehow larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Mythagos are beings conjured from the collective unconscious to cause ancient myths and archetypes of humanity to take physical form in the forest. Notably, the forest gives life to a powerful mythago named Guiwenneth who serves as a figure of affection and obsession for George Huxley and his sons.
After Rhea encounters the waking forest that borders her yard in a mirage-like, dreamlike glimpse, a strange boy offers to reveal its secrets if she'll play a game with him. There's a witch that lives in the forest. She waits on a throne made of carved bones for dreaming children to make wishes. As the forest stirs with a peculiar rushing of wind, the paths of Rhea and the witch seem to draw closer together. The story reaches a crescendo when members of Rhea's family begin to disappear. As Rhea's reality collides with that of the forest, she is forced to confront dark truths. While giving away too much of the plot spoils the twists, The Waking Forest does an incredible job of drawing the reader into a blurry, mystery-filled wood where judgment is clouded. Comparisons to Pan's Labyrinth in reviews of this novel definitely ring true!
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