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APRIL 2011

The Way Through the Woods begins with an effectively creepy opening sequence, as a teenage girl misses the last bus home, and is forced to take a walk through the dark woods as the edge of her town. Such a simple thing is made to feel a good deal more sinister than you’d expect. Nobody goes to Swallow Woods. Even the roads arc round it. Vicky goes into the woods, and nobody sees her again…

Sadly, despite this promising pre-title prelude, the book never quite builds on the situation. McCormack’s instinct is clearly for fantasy rather than horror, and the unsettling elements of the story are mostly lost in favour of mystery and wonder. All effectively written, but not what the story seemed set up to deliver. There’s an unusual structure to the book, with the Doctor locked up in Foxton police station for much of the duration, while Rory and Amy each take on a mission to enter the woods with another missing woman. Rory gets to go back to the Great War, tagging along with the spunky young Emily, who is easily the most entertaining character in the book. ‘Meanwhile,’ Amy remains in the present day and joins forces with Jess, a local reporter. It’s an interesting, if peculiar approach on the Doctor’s part - these women are recorded as going missing, so rather than prevent this, he makes his assistants go missing along with them. Naturally though, he plans to home in on them and find out just why the woods have been such a source of mystery for the last few centuries.

For a short novel, The Way Through the Woods takes a long time to get going, perhaps because, without the Doctor present, it feels as though we’re just biding time. Once within the woods, both Amy and Rory find temporal anomalies and an alien spacecraft, but deal with them differently; Amy gets bolshy with an alien occupant, while Rory loses his memory. While there’s a solid story reason for this, memory loss is a cliché that needs originality of approach to pull off, and in this case it just renders Rory useless for some time before his memory simply pops back into his head. Amy’s side of the investigation is more fruitful, and her encounter with Reyn, a vulpine space pilot, is presented with a dreamlike quality. Reyn is a sympathetic and well-drawn character; once explanations for the events in the woods are given, it becomes clear that this is a story with no villain; all the characters are trying to do what they think is right.

There are some eerily effective moments peppered throughout. Jess gets the shock of her life when she learns that she’s destined to be the next person to go missing, and a young man, on the run from the war, is pulled into a far more horrific experience in the centre of the woods. It’s a nice touch that the Reyn’s foxlike form has led to the local town and landmarks receiving fox-related names, convincingly putting across the idea that events in the woods have being going on for centuries. However, though it’s no fault of the author, the cover of the book promises quite a different story, as the artist has interpreted the elegant fox-man as a slavering werewolf, completely contrary to what we’re presented with in the text.

Once the Doctor finally arrives in the woods, events escalate to a conclusion that’s rather underwhelming; events are wrapped up rather too neatly, with the Doctor manipulating time a little too readily. The Way Through the Woods has its moments, but overall lacks punch. If it’s a gentle fantasy that you’re looking for, then this is a good choice; if you’re looking for something with more bite, look elsewhere.