The Woodcutters
By Josh Hanson
I read this books as part of Team Booked Solid, judging the SFINCS novella competition. This review reflects only of my own thoughts and does not represent the team’s final score.. I received a free copy of the book for the purpose of judging.
I’m vaguely aware of a genre called Weird West, which is something of a fantasy version of Wild West. I got the sense that The Woodcutters would have fit that description, but after finishing the story and looking up the book, I see it’s billed as horror. This works too, and it’s probably even more accurate.
Lewis Tanner is a woodcutters at an army fort somewhere in the American west. During an expedition, Lewis’ group is attacked by indians, leaving Lewis and his friend Eugene the only survivors. After some struggling, Lewis makes it back to the fort, where a vengeful officer soon makes him return to the site of the attack to hunt down the perpetrators. Here is where things start going seriously wrong, for everyone.
There’s something in the forest.
Something that’s far more dangerous, and far more evil, than the local natives.
The concept is intriguing, and there are great ideas here, but ultimately, this book did not work for me.
My main issue is with the writing. There are no errors or mistakes in either grammar or spelling, but there’s also no tension or sense of immediacy. Things happen – terrifying, horrible things – but they’re recounted more as facts than as exciting events. This has a knock-on effect on everything else in the book, and the elements of cosmic horror that could have worked really well in this setting, do not impress or engage to their full potential.
There’s also the issue of the main character. At somewhere past the halfway mark, a second Point of View character is added to the story, and the angle of the story changes. Lewis is no longer the protagonist, but something else, and the new protagonist isn’t someone I’ve had the time to really get to know or connect with.
What I didn’t like
Lewis. The main character starts out as fairly ordinary, if a little odd, young man. He could be likeable and relatable, but as his past is revealed, it becomes all the more clear he’s anything but. This can only be intentional by the author – probably as a way to show that dark secrets can hide everywhere (they absolutely can), but again, it doesn’t work for me, and I found it more annoying than thought-provoking.
What I liked
The concept and the setting. The idea behind The Woodcutters is excellent, and I feel like the location and time period really lend themselves to this kind of story. From the perspective of the intrepid white man explorer, we’ve got the great unknown land, and we’ve got illusive natives we don’t know or understand. There are strange and mysterious phenomena we take for superstition and fairytale. There is a ton of potential and it tickles the imagination.
Final Words
The Woodcutters has a lot of good ideas, but doesn’t quite hit the mark.
