THE FOREST OF A THOUSAND EYES

After an encounter with a sinister stranger, a young girl strikes out on her own.

Feather was born into a community perched high atop an ancient Wall, surrounded below on all sides by the malevolent Forest that threatens to swallow up their home. Supplies are dwindling; eager to map her strange world, Feather steals her people’s only spyglass and brings it to a new arrival named Merildun in the hopes that he’ll help her. Instead, he shoves her off the Wall. She resolves to get the spyglass back, and as she sets out in search of Merildun, accompanied by a scaly ferret companion, she encounters community after community of previously isolated human encampments spread out along the Wall—and learns that cooperation may hold the key to everyone’s survival. In a scant 128 pages, Hardinge immerses readers in a world of dangers and wonders, where nature isn’t neutral but actively hostile, waging an eternal war against the few remaining humans. The author makes adept use of lush imagery, which comes to the fore when her protagonist must dive into the Forest proper at last. Though the book contains echoes of classic children’s dystopias such as Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Below the Root (1975), Hardinge’s lavishly imagined setting is wholly original. Gravett’s ink drawings temper the horrors but none of the magic. Most characters are pale-skinned.

Sumptuous worldbuilding and deft plotting make for a harrowing dystopian story that nevertheless thrums with hope.