The Forest Is Hungry by Christopher Stanley



A sick daughter, a father’s race against time to find the one thing that might save her and a mysterious tree growing through the kitchen floor… 

Author Christopher Stanley on writing ‘The Forest Is Hungry’: “Quite often my stories come from several different places. In this one, the walk at the beginning, where the parents are separated from their child, is a walk I’ve done a number of times with my own family. My sister moved into a big new house and she told me about some of the conversations she had had with the site foreman. And we have a family friend who cuts our trees for us. All of these things happened around the same time and – bang! – there’s the story!” 

 This is the third offering I've read in Demain Publishing's Short Sharp Shocks and now I'm hooked. This time I've read, The Forest is Hungry by Christopher Stanley. It's a really vicious folk horror tale of a family torn apart through separation trying to survive

 The story starts with every parents worst nightmare, a child goes missing in the woods. for centuries we've been told the dark folk tales that warn about the perils of babes in the woods and this modern version is no different.

 After taking his only child, Becca, to the woods, outside his home, Richard realises something is amiss. Afterwards she speaks only in strange riddles and then the trees start moving in. It's not just him and his family that is being targeted it's everyone in his street.

 The Forest is hungry.

 I loved this tale, it starts off with a bang and just keeps gathering pace. It's hard to say much without giving spoilers  only that its a really creepy story that won't fail to disapoint even the most hardened horror fan. 

 I like to think that this story exists in the same forest as Kev Harrison's Cinders of a Blind Man Who Could See, also released by Demain Publishing.  Both stories are set around an ancient woodland that has stood for centuries and will stand for centuries after the last human has walked the earth. Maybe its the powerful forces within that keep this forest untouched.

Comments

  1. GoEssays10 August 2019 at 09:10

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Stone Road by G.R.Matthews

Image
I was introduced to this book as part of Fantasy Faction's Book Club where we all get together and discuss our favourite books. This time the administrator chose a title that had been self published. Out now via Amazon Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret, that yes of course there are a lot of really bad self published books out there, but there are also some really good ones. Since buying a kindle I've bought numerous self published titles for as little as 49p and have enjoyed most of them. Recently I read The Lady of the Helm by T.O.Munro and that was really very good. I'm going off track a bit here but if you love fantasy fiction and want to read really amazing self published fiction then head over to Mark Lawrence's site where he hosts the annual SPFBO - The Self Published Fantasy Blog-Off in which top bloggers read through the top 273 self published fantasy  novels to determine an overall winner. So back to  the Stone Road by G.R.Matthews.
Read more

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

Image
For fans of Mexican Gothic, from three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a novel inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in classic literature--from Lucy Westenra, a victim of Stoker’s Dracula, and Bertha Mason, from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre--as they band together to combat the toxic men bent on destroying their lives, set against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967. Reluctant Immortals  is a historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967 when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Combining elements of historical and gothic fiction with a modern perspective, in a tale of love and betrayal and coercion,  Reluctant Immortals  is the lyrical and harrowing journey of two women from classic literature as they brave
Read more

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

Image
This epic tale is a fictional memoir of Uhtred, son of Uhtred who's destiny was forged in battle between the pagan Viking warriors and the pious Christian Anglo-Saxons in 9th century Britain. "My name is Uhtred. I am the son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred and his father was also called Uhtred. My father’s clerk, a priest called Beocca, spelt it Utred. I do not know if that was how my father would have written it, for he could neither read nor write, but I can do both and sometimes I take the old parchments from their wooden chest and I see the name spelled Uhtred or Utred or Ughtred or Ootred, and I look at the deeds which say that Uhtred, son of Uhtred, is the lawful and sole owner of the lands that are carefully marked by stones and by dykes, by oaks and by ash, by marsh and by sea, and I dream of those lands, wave-beaten and wild beneath the wind driven sky. I dream, and know that one day I will take back the land from those who stole it from me." (Taken from
Read more