Into the Heartless Wood

October 1, 2020

Gr 9 Up-This book takes readers into a world of fantasy mixed with 19th-century technology. Meyer tells the story from two perspectives, Owen Merrick and Seren. Owen lives near the wood-the wood that killed his mother. Legend has it that a witch charmed the trees to harvest souls for her heartless tree. It is dangerous to go near the wood, and there's an unmistakable magic that takes people who dare to step foot there. Yet Owen finds himself in the wood, against his father's will, to spend time with a tree siren named Seren. Seren has a tumultuous past that intertwines with Owen's, but she still wants to be with him. Written in the stars is yet another prophecy of the Soul Eater, while a war is raging on between the king and witch. Will Owen and Seren be able to find their happy ending? The beginning of this fantasy starts strong, with Owen's perspective written in prose and Seren's voice written in free verse. The story easily catches readers up with the fantasy world and its history, yet compels them to find out more. Readers will easily anticipate the outcome, but it comes to a slow and overly-complicated ending. Secondary human characters have a range of skin tones, though Owen's is unspecified. VERDICT A captivating fantasy story that takes readers on a journey, yet leaves them hanging in the end.-Paige Kostelyk, DeMotte Christian Grade Sch., IN

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2020
In Tarian, a magical forest fights the kings' railroads and telegraphs, and a young man is caught in the crossfire. Owen, 17, raises his sister and keeps house by day while maintaining star charts for the king by night. Across the wall that edges his garden, the Gwydden, the power in the woods who has turned eight birches into her humanoid tree-siren daughters, steals souls and has her daughters kill in scenes reminiscent of a literary horror novel. Owen's present-tense, first-person narration alternates with the jagged, vaguely poetic narration of Seren, the Gwydden's youngest daughter, who no longer wants to kill for her mother. Centered on the relationship between Owen and the tree siren, this is a story with limited space for secondary characters, although an intriguing background mythos reveals itself through Owen's and Seren's stories. The emphasis on souls--evil feeds on them, the tree siren longs for one, and their importance, along with hearts, anchors much of the magic--lends a Christian moral code to an otherwise firmly fantastical setting that has a Welsh flavor. Familiar motifs, such as wilderness versus technology, a witch versus a king, and star-crossed lovers, placed in unfamiliar settings ensure that this dark romantic fantasy fulfills expectations without becoming formulaic. Owen is White in a world with some racial diversity and no prejudice. Diverting. (Romantic fantasy. 12-18)

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November 1, 2020
Grades 9-12 Gwydden's Wood is a terrifying place, home to the witch and her tree siren daughters. Every day, every night, the sirens sing, luring travelers and villagers into the wood and to their deaths, their souls used to feed the witch and the wood. Owen Merrick, who lost his mother two years ago, lives too near the wood, and fights the song every day as he tends to his two-year-old sister and grieving father. When he's almost killed in a train crash by the siren Seren, Owen escapes only by her mercy, though as he struggles to remember her, she haunts him, having fallen in love. Meyer's writing is clever, alternating chapters between Owen and Seren, who is at first known only as "Monster." This Welsh-inspired tale goes a bit steampunk--it includes science, astronomy, a cross-country train, and telegram cables--lending depth to a story that takes some time to really get going.

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