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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Hardinge, Frances

The Forest of a Thousand Eyes

128 pp. August, 2025 | Trade ISBN 978-1-41977-778-3 $19.99
(1) 4-6 Hardinge and Gravett pair up again (Island of Whispers, rev. 7/24) in a short, atmospheric tale told through Hardinge's skillful fairy-tale prose and Gravett's art, which intertwines, illuminates, and sometimes takes over pages altogether. The tale evokes mystery and danger, this time amongst humans whose stature is now comparatively tiny next to the surrounding wilds. Feather and her community live inside the Wall, a decaying stone structure that snakes away from their home in two directions. Their enemy is the Forest, "pushing forward like an army" with its rampant, savage growth and the hazardous creatures it hosts. It's Feather's task as a gatherer to forage outside the Wall; when a stranger steals the community's valuable spyglass from her, she embarks on a quest to retrieve it. Her discoveries of other settlements along the Wall alert her to the possibilities of cooperation, trade, and shared technology. In this quasi-post-apocalyptic story, a travelogue of sorts, nature is the enemy more than the provider, threatening to invade, dismantle, and subsume humans and their hard-won homes. Softly shaded illustrations emphasize the natural world's overwhelming magnitude to Feather, sometimes in close-up views of insects and birds; sometimes opening out to expansive vistas; sometimes dissolving into impressionistic flecks of light and greenery.
Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2025

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