Don’t Go Out There

Now, it’s true that the towns folk of Amity Falls aren’t forbidden from leaving, and other people aren’t forbidden from visiting. But buried as deep in the shadow of Blackspire Mountains as the village is, and surrounded as it is on all sides by a nearly impenetrable forest rumored to be full of devils, it’s safe to say that trips out of the village and visitors to it are… uncommon. Usually only supply parties travel through, providing the village with much needed goods that they aren’t able to produce themselves. When one of those parties goes missing, however, and a series of strange, unfortunate occurrences start to plague Amity Falls, it gets the locals wondering whether the devils in the forest have returned, with their dark promises and too tempting bargains.

You might remember A History of Wild Places from the December new releases newsletter last week! It is a brand new, shiny horror release that begins with two unexplained disappearances: Maggie St. James, author of dark, macabre children’s books, and Travis Wren, the private investigator who was hired to look for her. Years later, we have Theo, who has lived in Pastoral all his life, and knows very well that the community rule is no one in, no one out. People don’t leave Pastoral, and outsiders definitely don’t come to Pastoral. So when Theo discovers Travis’ long abandoned truck outside the border of the settlement, it raises a lot of questions about the supposedly isolated world into which he was born.

Technically, people can leave Bethel for the outside world in The Year of the Witching. But though it is possible to physically leave Bethel (though only with permission), leaving Bethel doesn’t really mean you’ve escaped Bethel, as we see all too clearly at one point in the book. On the whole, Bethel is a forbidding, insular community of people whose lives are dictated by a rigid, religious ruler. Their Prophet. Immanuelle, our heroine, is the unwanted child of the disgraced daughter of a once powerful man of the church, her birth brought her whole family down into the dust, and no matter how hard she tries to obey the laws of Bethel, she can never scrape free of her mother’s shame. But when a trip to the market gone awry finds Immanuelle deep in the confines of the forbidden Darkwood that surrounds Bethel – a place of witches, spirits, and evil – new secrets about her mother emerge and turn Immanuelle’s life on its head.

The Beauty is one of the strangest books (in the best possible way) that I have ever read. So, personally, I think its brilliant, and not just because it’s about creepy fungi. The Valley of the Rocks is a secluded, traditionalist society of people who have retreated from the outside world, seeking a new way of life. But the peaceful balance of the village is upended when a frightening fungal plague sweeps through the population, affecting and killing all the women. Now only a small population of men and boys survive, gathering each night to hear tales of the women they lost and believing themselves to be the last generation of humanity. Whether the fungal plague exists outside of the Valley of the Rocks is something we’re never told, it’s really up to the reader to decide, but the unexpected fallout from the plague is on full display as peculiar mushrooms start growing from the graves of the dead, taking human form.

I think Sorrowland might be the only title on this list where most of the action actually takes pace out in the “don’t go out there” zone, as a pregnant Vern flees the strict religious compound in which she was raised, Cainland, fleeing to the woods to give birth to her children. In the outside world, Vern does her best to survive in an unfamiliar world while evading the compound’s grasp. Unfortunately, wherever Vern goes, Cainland follows after, making true escape almost impossible. When Vern’s body begins to transform, metamorphizing into something new, powerful, and strange, it becomes clear why Cainland is so reluctant to let her go. Whatever she’s becoming is evidence of how deep the cult’s corruption goes.