Welcome to the Final stage of SPFBO 10! As you know, the 10 blogs all picked their champion who advanced into the finals, including ourselves. Check out our SPFBO 10 page for more info! SPFBO 10 ends on April 30th, and so we’ll post our finalist reviews every two weeks or so until then.
Our 6th SPFBO 10 finalist review is for The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage by Hiyodori. The order of the reviews within a post will be in alphabetical order.
A quick reminder about how we are proceeding in the Finals: our judges had the freedom to opt out of reading any of the books due to personal interest, time restrictions, unforeseen life events, etc. Our aim is to have at least 4 reviews/scores for each finalist.
Both in the Semi-Final and Final stages we have a DNF rule in place: if a judge reads a book (either semi-finalist or finalist if they didn’t opt out beforehand), they have to read at least 25% of it. If they decide to DNF between 25%-50% they’ll have to give a score but can opt out of writing a review, and if they DNF after 50% (or not) then also have to score AND write a review.
For The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage we have 4 reviews and 5 scores for your reading pleasures.
So, without further ado, let’s take a closer look at our sixth finalist!
Table of Contents
| Series: | standalone |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
| Publisher: | self-published |
| Date of Publishing: | August 14, 2023 |
| Pages: | 575 |
After years of city life, Tiller is finally ready to revisit the magical forest where she grew up. But the forest has turned deadly, and Tiller has no magic of her own. To survive, she’ll need a bodyguard.
Tiller finds only one mage willing to escort her. A woman named Carnelian: a soldier with a pretty face and a dodgy reputation. Carnelian loves parties, drinking, flirting, big spending, and taking risks that others would find downright unthinkable. She’ll happily lead Tiller to the heart of the Devouring Forest.
But she won’t do it for free.
The two of them live in a country where magic-users like Carnelian labor under lifelong legal restrictions. The fastest ticket to greater liberty: getting married. Which is why Carnelian—known far and wide as the mage who no one would wed—demands Tiller’s hand in marriage as her payment.
Cautious, reserved Tiller never lets strangers invade her personal space. She’s horrified by the prospect of marrying a mischievous gambler. But she still needs Carnelian’s magic to overcome the wild monsters blocking the path back to her childhood home.
And the deeper they go in the forest, the greater the danger. Tiller will have to learn very quickly how to deal with the darker side of her would-be wife.
The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage is a slow-burn f/f romance with two polar-opposite heroines—both hiding enormous secrets—reluctantly engaged to be married for the sake of convenience. This novel takes place in the same contemporary fantasy world as The First and Last Demon and the Clem & Wist series, but can be read and enjoyed as a standalone story.
Drew
Read: 100%
All Tiller wants is to keep a promise to the woman she thought of as her grandmother and return her remains to her ancestral homeland deep in the Forest. With the Forest having grown more dangerous and pushing beyond its familiar borders, she has limited time to achieve her goal and can’t do it alone.
The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage is tricky to categorise, which is likely to be both to its benefit & its detriment. Part exploration of guilt and loss, part slow-burn romance, and part fantastical adventure through a fascinating world.
Since the novel is told from Tiller’s perspective, we spend the greatest amount of time in her head, which is something the character does herself. Already isolated from years of being under threat, and having lost everyone close to her, the determination to fulfill her grandmother’s last wish makes sense as both a way of honouring her and as a means of atonement. Despite her withdrawn nature, she strikes a bargain with the other main character, Carnelian Silva. In return for safeguarding her to and from the Forest, Tiller agrees to a marriage of convenience to the erratic mage.
While there are a few supporting characters in the first half of the novel; once the two characters enter the Forest, they’re on their own. With no-one else to rely on, or perhaps get in the way, this is where the romantic elements grow stronger and the two begin to open up about their pasts, including some shared traumas.
As mentioned, this is a slower-paced novel, with stretches of soul-searching interspersed with short bursts of action as various elements seek to prevent their quest. While there is a lot to reward the reader, such as the world-building and the unique magic system, I suspect that the leisurely progress will cause as many to give as to persist to the end.
Jen
Read: 100%
The story of The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage revolves around Tiller’s desire to return her grandmother’s ashes, back to the devouring forest where they once lived. Her guide and protection on this journey is in the form of Carnelian, a mage and soldier, who only agreed to this dangerous job in exchange for Tiller’s hand in marriage (and the benefits and freedoms that would come with it).
This is my second or third book I’ve read by Hiyodori, and the one thing I appreciate about Hiyodori’s stories is just how wonderfully weird and magical feeling her worlds are. From things like the vorpals; which are kind of like wormholes that just pop up out of nowhere to spit out a monster, or suck you off to some other place, to the migrating forest; which is alive and not in the sense that the trees are living but in the sense that it has a conscience of sorts.
That’s not even touching on the magic wells in mages or how those mages need operators to heal and soothe the branches of these wells, otherwise they get tangled and cause problems. Or is it touching on a myriad of other cool things that make these stories so very unique. I rarely have read a story with such fantastical feeling places or events and it makes me think of what drew me to fantasy way back when I first found the genre.
*
This was a tough review to write because saying all the above, I really should have been more enamoured with this story than I was, and I am not quite sure if the only thing holding me back from absolute love was the slow pace or if it was something else, or a bit of both.
While there is a broader picture of the world and the politics around them, The Forest at the Heart of her Mage is still very character-based. The story is more narrow-focused on Tiller and Carnelian’s journey; both through the forest and through their very complicated relationship as a couple, which is further complicated by childhood trauma.
Generally, I eat this kind of stuff up with a spoon; especially when it’s sugar-coated with the enemies to lovers and a few other things that I like, and will keep a secret so I don’t spoil the many layers involved with these two characters, and just how interconnected to certain parts of the story they were.
Also despite what my talk of relationships and romance implies, this is not a romantasy. It most definitely falls into fantasy w/ a slight slow-burn romance, and a side of cosyish travelling…is/if cosy travelling a thing? Yes, I was invested in them as a couple working things out, but I was also prepared because there was just as much of a chance of one of them getting sucked through a vorpal.
Hiyodori’s other books are similar in the way they build and in the use of their reveals, but they seemed faster-paced to me. Or maybe my knowledge of the world they reside in has interfered here. I have a clearer understanding and am no longer turning the pages trying to unravel the mysteries of the world, on top of the mysteries of the story she is building. For whatever reason, The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage seemed to be so much slower going.
BUT because I have had past experiences with Hiyodori’s stories, I know how creative a storyteller she is and how much of her storytelling is built in layers upon layers and I could see here that she is building to something that will tie it all together and make me go, wow! That knowledge is what kept me going, even when I was ready to bow out.
And yes, The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage did do all of that – eventually. It built, it connected, and it gave me an inspired tale in the end, one that I doubt I would have found elsewhere. As I said; I do love how creative Hiyodori is in her storytelling. But I also think it took entirely too long to get to that point. It felt like we had a lot of filler and repetition, and once we had that main conflict resolved, there was still quite a bit left that didn’t need a third more of the book to wrap up (IMO of course).
I like closing all the doors and tidying up the loose ends but by this point, I was getting impatient. I was ready to see how things were going to end and hopefully it isn’t too spoilery to say, but the end was quite lovely once we got there, and made me happy that no one got sucked in a vorpal.
Timy
Read: 52%
As this was my first book from Hiyodori, I didn’t have any preconceptions or expectations going in. I can’t say I loved The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage, as I decided to DNF at the 52% mark, but it wasn’t bad either. It fell somewhere in the middle, and if it was a 100 or so pages shorter, I might have even finished it. Maybe.
The base plot is pretty straightforward: Teller wants to honour the remains of her grandmother and her friend by following their Forester customs and putting them into one of the fire caves deep in the forest. But she has two problems: one, she needs a mage to accompany her, and two, she only has a limited time before the government brings in a big force to destroy part of the forest, attempting to stop its invasion. Carnelian is the only volunteer who is willing to accompany her, and she wants Teller to marry her as a payment. Obviously, a lot more is going on, but I’m not going to go into details. Although, spoiler: they eventually get into the forest, but it takes almost half of the book for them to get there, and honestly, by that point, I wasn’t all that interested. Which is a bit of a shame, because I suspect that’s where things finally got interesting. But I was struggling with the pace, the repetitions, and the fact that I really didn’t care all that much about the characters.
The older I get, the less patience I have for long books – and I’ve never been the patient type to begin with. And while The Forest at the Hear of Her Mage has some cool things going for it (like how the mages have cores and need to be “maintained” every once in a while), ultimately, it just wasn’t enough to keep me in the story.
Tru
Read: 100%
The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage is a contemporary fantasy set on a Japanese-coded island with a magical, if slightly malevolent, forest that seems to be alive (well, more alive than forests normally are) as it constantly expands and encroaches on human territories. This story is about Tiller, a reserved forester who was born in the forest and lived there until their people were forced to move to the big city due to the growing dangers. Adapting to city life hasn’t been easy for Tiller or her people, and when her mentor dies, she decides to undertake a pilgrimage back to the forest to spread her mentor’s ashes.
Enter Carnelian, a flamboyant mage with a gambling habit who has agreed to escort Tiller into the forest, acting as a bodyguard of sorts. In this world, mages have magical cores that provide magic, and Carnelian is special in that she has several of these cores. However, the threads of her magic can get ‘tangled’ leading to mages losing control and possibly going berserk, thus they need someone – Tiller in this case – to perform ‘maintenance’ on them and literally keep them straight. Oh, and Carnelian wants to marry Tiller for government benefit (and secret!) reasons. Thus begins a relationship between two characters that couldn’t be more opposite, but as they travel together, it seems they have more in common then Tiller could ever imagine…
This is a slow burn story, with a slow burn sapphic romance. We spend much of the first half of the book following Tiller and Carnelian around the city as they get to know each other and prepare for their trip into the forest. The second half of the book, then, finally enters the forest and there are many secrets and twists inside to be discovered.
I read another review that said this story meanders, and I’d agree with that. It feels like a longer book than it is. It actually reminds me of Studio Ghibli films, in that much of the story feels like a slice of life fantasy. There are action scenes with some fighting and magic flung around, but these feel few and far between. Some readers may appreciate this more than others. The romance elements are also quite light, so those expecting romance may feel a bit disappointed. However, the strongest aspect of The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage, for me, was the fascinating worldbuilding and unique concepts that are explored through the way this world treats its mages, to the mystery and wonder of the forest itself. This is certainly a book where you can enjoy the scenery.
Our score for The Forest at the Heart of Her Mage by Hiyodori:
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