Taste the Books: Review Morsels #69 Melissa Albert: "The Hazel Wood" Series

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm STILL writing long reviews too - but for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis, and I took to writing them also for novels that I can do justice to in a less wordy fashion, in order to ease my reviewing burden. In addition to that, I sometimes write minis for books I don't want/don't have the time to review in full at the moment, but plan on rereading and writing "proper" reviews for later. Lastly, just be warned - this feature is VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

(The Hazel Wood #1)

★★★★

17 y.o. Alice has spent her whole life running from bad luck with her mother and obsessing over her estranged grandmother, the reclusive author of a dark fairy-tale collection; until her mother disappears, and she (aided by a fan of her now dead grandma's) goes in search of her in a world that isn't supposed to exist, where the stories have teeth and can eat you alive...

***

Rated 4.5 really.

This was my third Albert book, and for a while I was wondering if it would be the first that I wouldn't love. The worst thing I can say about it is that, to me, everything that came before Alice's crossing into the titular wood and the Hinterland (the portal realm where her grandma's stories are set) felt like a long prologue - compulsively readable, gorgeously written (if with some purple spikes), but in the end, lacking that element of novelty that this jaded portal-fantasy reader was craving. Yes, the Hinterland inhabitants are stalking Alice in her reality, and yes, they're creepy. Yes, she's hell-bent on finding her mother, who's supposedly held captive in the same realm. Been there, read that. Except...when Alice finally sets foot (well...not exactly 😁) into the world where her grandmother's tales come from, first the story becomes spellbinding, then everything clicks into place and OH! that was actually GENIUS! There was a reason for Alice's perpetual rage and standoffishness. The bad luck was actually...something else. The main twist - as usual with Albert - was completely earned, but impossible to fathom, and it changed EVERYTHING. Also, in retrospect, the couple of stories from the Hinterland compendium that we were told earlier in the book didn't feel like weird interpolations anymore. In the end - very much like Albert's The Children, though in a different fashion - The Hazel Wood is an ode to the power of creation (in all its beauty and cruelty), very meta yet heartbreakingly human, and if that's your jam, congrats! you've just been introduced to your new favourite author. (Bonus points for the Doctor Who references, AGAIN - see The Bad Ones).

Note: as a rule, I review every book that I rate 4 stars and above in full, unless it's a novella or an anthology. But I didn't want to go in too deep about this one to avoid spoilers, and it felt easy to summarise its contents (and my opinions) in a few sentences, so I took the mini-review route.

The Night Country by Melissa Albert

(The Hazel Wood #2)

★★★★

Two years after fleeing the Hinterland, a still haunted Alice is struggling to live a normal life, until some of her fellow escapees who took refuge in New York start being murdered and her very life seems to be in peril - while an old, dimension-hopping friend is on a collision course with her, and their meeting could either spell doom or salvation for the human world.

***

Rated 4.5 really.

(No spoilers about Book 1...which will be tricky AF - but in case you haven't read it yet, I'd rather not reveal anything major...the very mini blurb above is purposely cryptic and more than a bit skewed).

I'll be honest: if my favourite part of The Hazel Wood was the alternate-universe stuff (and THAT twist of course), the same goes for The Night Country - though in this case there's more than one world involved, if briefly (OK, only one world that really matters, but we get to visit a few and we're introduced to a bunch of super-cool Hinterland artifacts, so 😁). And by the end, the alternate-universe stuff in question will have you on the edge of your seat. So, if you're like me, you shouldn't miss this book for that reason alone. But there are plenty of others, too: a protagonist doubting herself and questioning her place in the world(s) (that's as far as I can go without giving anything away); a cast of secondary characters doing the same, but lacking her emotional anchor to the human one, which is where things get messy; a string of murders with an unfathomable explanation; an intense reunion (though to me the romance felt a bit like an afterthought, given what happened in Book 1); twists that are earned but you can't see coming; and luscious prose that - as usual with Albert - can flirt with purple here and there, but never gets in the way of the story. Plus of course THAT premise, the one I can't talk about, the one that sets this duology apart from similar stories - the one that amps up the reader's emotional investment. Bottom line: darker and more violent than The Hazel Wood, but at the same time poetical and whimsical, TNC is yet another ode to the (equally double-edged) power of storytelling, and to those characters who jump from the narrative a tad more literally than one would expect. Except, even if you've read Book 1, you're not ready for the spin it puts on it...

Note: as a rule, I review every book that I rate 4 stars and above in full, unless it's a novella or an anthology. But I didn't want to go in too deep about this one to avoid spoilers, and it felt easy to summarise its contents (and my opinions) in a few sentences, so I took the mini-review route.

Tales from the Hinterland by Melissa Albert

(The Hazel Wood #2.5)

★★★★

Twelve gruesome fairy tales set in the Hazel Wood series universe, some of them working as origin stories for its characters, yet completely enjoyable on their own...only, don't go in looking for happy endings.

***

I may be biased, because I read and loved the Hazel Wood duology...but I ended up enjoying this collection a lot more than I thought I would, considering that 1) I'm not a huge fan of fairy tales, and 2) short story is far from my favourite format. But Albert has a way with words, and the gift of making you care for her characters even in so short a page count. It doesn't hurt that these stories have the typical flavour of classic fairy tales (minus the happy ending), yet at the same time their mythology is fresh and creative. All the main characters are female, often wronged or abused in some way, always trying to regain their agency whatever the cost, sometimes becoming villains in the process - but you can't help sympathising with them all the same (more so if you've read the rest of the series and learned the even uglier truth about their world). I have but a couple of observations: apparently, these tales aren't big on diversity (which can be explained with their adhering to the classic-fairy-tales rules, but still), and they aren't so earth-shattering to potentially inspire the cult following that they generate in the Hazel Wood narrative universe. Anyway, whether you've read The Hazel Wood and The Night Country or not, whether you live on a (dark) fantasy diet or are just a dabbler, I bet you'll find a lot to love in this book.

Note: definitive review (due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series. Also, since I had already written mini reviews for the novel-sized first installments in this series, it would only make sense for me to do the same with this companion book...).

So, have you read/are you planning to read any of the above? And if you have, what do you think of them? Do you post mini reviews? Do you like to read them?