THE MIRRORWOOD

To survive her curse and those who’d punish her for her affliction, a 12-year-old seeks answers in a magical wood while accompanied by her cat.

Fable adores her large family, but her mere existence is dangerous to them. Since infancy, she’s been cursed with a blight that comes from the corrupted Mirrorwood. Each blight is different, but Fable’s is horrible: Rather than having a face of her own, she can only steal the face and, along with it, the good health, of someone she touches. Every few days, just to stay alive, Fable must harm someone in her family. And on top of that, her life is constantly in danger from the blighthunters, who seek out the blighted and kill them. Faced with such a hunter, Fable flees with her cat, Moth, into the Mirrorwood, where the godlike Subtle Powers grant her a quest that might offer a cure. In this magical forest she encounters villagers stuck in eerie, seemingly joyful time loops and others whose blights are more grotesque or dangerous than her own. The mashup of fairy-tale tropes and children’s literature references gets unexpectedly dark, but clear coming-of-age arcs (and adventures with “a fox girl, a winged scholar, and a demon prince”) keep the text accessible. Fable and her family read as White; other characters sport a wide variety of skin tones and hair colors. The world features both different-sex and same-sex couples, and Fable has a nonbinary sibling.

Starts as a fairy-tale retelling but goes somewhere cleverly original once in the enchanted wood.