Gods of the Wyrdwood by RJ Barker

I would like to thank Nazia from orbit for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Orbit

Published – Out Now

Price – £20 hardback £11.99 Kindle eBook

Ours is a land of many gods, and we are a people with the ability to pick the worst of them.

Cahan du Nahare is known as the forester - a humble man who can nonetheless navigate the dangerous Deepforest like no-one else. But once he was more. Once he was a warrior.

Udinny serves the goddess of the lost, a goddess of the small and helpless. When she ventures into the Deepforest to find a missing child, Cahan will be her guide.

But in a land at war, in a forest full of monsters - Cahan will need to choose between his past life and the one he leads now - and his choice will have consequences for his entire world.

I love stories that trust the reader to work out the world and the story. I’m never a fan of the clunky several paragraphs of a character explaining the key plot to their friends (and us) I always puzzle why no one ever interrupts the rather dry monologue. For the attraction in fantasy is to push what we think of as normal; create a world that is very much not ours and give us a sense of awe and wonder and for me the fun is putting all these pieces of information together. In RJ Barker’s new novel Gods of The Wyrdwood that starts a new trilogy we are delivered a tale of wonder, heroism, weirdness and most of all a magical reading experience that to my mind is again an impressive entry into epic fantasy. In short this book gives me the sense of magic I love to find in fantasy.

The world of Crua is one harsh seasons and harsh life. People are regularly rocked by changing of Gods and their manic followers. Food is hard to grow and if you’re not careful the woods will swallow up your home. Cahan is Clanless – he owes no loyalty to anyone and lives on a solitary farm trading with the folk of nearby Harn. He rarely tells anyone his past or his secrets. He though regularly hunted by the rulers of the world – the Rai who now serve a cruel god known as Tarl-an-Gig.

One leader of the Rai is High Leoric Kirven who continually jostles position for power in a dangerous world where one slip may end your career and life. Kirven’s child Venn though exhibits the signs of having a magical entity known as a Cowl within them. But to awaken its full potential Venn must learn to embrace killing. His constant refusal to do so is putting pressure on Kirven and a group of Rai are sent into the woods with Rai to do whatever it takes to ensure Venn accepts his destiny. This means soon Venn will meet Cahan; both will learn each other’s secrets, and both will learn the forests of Wyrdwood and its strange inhabitants have plans too for the pair and the wider world.

This was a pretty amazing reading experience. Barker is known now for taking familiar fantasy concepts and playing with them to create exceptionally new tales. Here we have a land where metal is scarce and instead, we have a vast ecosystem of strange creatures the humans live alongside. Barker utilises the idea of a strange magical forest and creates somewhere more immense, strange, magical and one that can be both immediately wondrous, ethereal or downright dangerous often within a single page. Alongside this we get a tale of the people of Crua who indeed are exposed to the harshest of lives and constant power struggles that care little about the simple folk that get trodden on when mighty powers go to war. What this book does is help introduce the reader slowly to the core concepts of the world (as with The Bone Ships) but gently as we move through the acts of the book we start to see the bigger canvas this story will be using.

Barker initially allows us to focus on Cahan and here we have a middle-aged silent hero hiding as a farmer. Cahan knows the world; its powers and clearly, he has a past. The first sections of the book get us to understand the malevolence of the Rai and this strange entity within them known as Cowl that feeds on death and pain to make the Rai owner more powerful. Throughout we get the sense Cahan is holding back and indeed as he crosses Venn’s path, we see brutally what Cahan can do when he allows himself. This section allows us to see what everyday life in the world is like – hard. People are without much hope, loyalty can be bought, and the threat of death lies everywhere. It sets up the Rai as a force to be feared and makes us very loyal to Cahan.

Barker then with the simple plot device of Cahan being asked to find a lost child allows us to experience the woods. With him is the charming roguish and just plain fun character Udinny. A young woman travelling where she feels she needs to go. Udinny being completely unused to these places allows us to see the world through her eyes and Cahan’s gentle and sometimes less than gentle instructions. This is not a simple magical forest in any way. The ecology is almost alien. The deeper into the forests particularly the area as Wyrdwood where the trees will climb into the clouds and a branch can be 60 feet thick. Creatures that float through the forest using gas controls and internal gas bubbles (who also some when captured become vehicles); predators who can lure prey to see things that are not there and endlessly strange folk living within it from the outlaw archers known as Forestrals; the reanimated skeletons of the dead serving an unknown force and the even stranger Boughery who leave victims in agony for days. I loved this section for its inventiveness, sense of awe and wonder it feels amazingly different to most other fantasy worlds. This is not a place I’m going to forget. The overall sense is these woods too have plans for Cahan and Udinny and their small adventure will set a bigger story in train too.

The final act isn’t about a battle to save the world is Cahan trying to save a village of people who most of the time have only just about tolerated him. All the plot strands of the books cross here into an initially slow burning looming sense of imminent disaster. A village of farmers and traders will end up having to battle 200 armed and dangerous Rai. In some ways this is a reluctant warrior tale as Cahan must finally show all his skills and abilities and yet knows that still will not be enough on his own. The tension builds and builds until we get a feast of fast exciting and often vicious battle scenes that really bring us into feeling the terror of these last stands. It also brings up the central theme of the book – doing what is right. Standing up to evil; sticking to your own moral code and helping people in need because that is the kind thing to do. Not everyone has magical powers and those who do without can be just as heroic.

Its finally worth pointing out how good Barker’s writing is. Many stories will just have sections detailing Cahan’s path. Instead, we get short interludes of one or two pages that help colour in Cahan’s earlier life – often told in second person that make you briefly feel all the things that this man, who now hides all his emotions, once felt and explains who he now is. It’s a great subtle way of knowing a character. As always Barker’s narration even in third person is not flat storytelling. The use of language; the occasional act of foretelling and the way Barker can make action scenes come alive for me always feel like someone from this world is telling the story and I am often just admiring how the sentences are coming together to paint the picture. Throughout though with ideas such as undead soldiers on a quest, masked priests, magical armours  and Gods who inhabit other bodies there is a sense that this world has so much more underneath it to discover and Cahan’s action are going to reveal all of this over the coming series.

Safe to say Gentle Reader I am a fan of this book. RJ Barker is one of the UK’s most exciting fantasy writers and in Gods of the Wyrdwood we get a tale that very much dares to do its own thing. A world we have not seen before is brought to life full of its own unique myths and creatures. It feels ancient and yet in fantasy terms refreshingly inventive, compelling and awe-inspiring. I am definitely here for the long ride deep into the forest and highly recommend you join me! Go get it!