Thanks to Rebellion Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC.

The Dark Between Trees follows two groups in different time periods who have entered the apparently haunted Moresby forest in England. The first is a group of soldiers escaping an ambush by fleeing into the forest. The second is a group of five professional women who enter with the hope of figuring out what happened to the group of soldiers. The story flips between each group as they work their way into the woods and mysterious events begin to plague each group.
The story has terrific atmosphere and descriptions of the forest. You can really feel the closeness of the trees, the press of the weather and overall creepiness of the setting. There is a slow build up to the reveals and there were several "oh dang" moments that were surprising. As for the characters, I liked Davies, the Captain of the fleeing soldiers, but we don't get near enough time or background on him and would have liked more. Of the women, I have to say Alice was a bit abrasive and I just didn't connect much with the others. While the overall feel and pace to the story was good, the ending fell a bit flat, was expecting more of a reveal here. Some of the threads weren't wrapped up in an impactful way. It left me wanting more for a satisfying ending.

I found this a really curious book, but an enjoyable one, if ‘enjoyable’ is the right word. I don’t often read horror books of this type, and can find them a bit hit and miss; as a whole The Dark Between the Trees was a hit, even if I did have a few issues.

Its biggest strength is its atmosphere. Barnett has quite a distinct writing style that flows well and is very engaging - after a certain point I struggled to put it down. She also creates a very effective sense of impending doom, from the moment our characters enter the wood. The story creeps along; there’s almost a plodding nature to it, reflecting the characters slow progress through the forest, but the pacing never slipped into being slow. This wasn’t the most exciting book, but there was a constant sense of Something Is About To Happen. I dreaded every moment they fell asleep, every moment someone wandered off path, every moment someone wandered off-path.

The story is told from two perspectives: a group of female academics, surveyors, and park rangers from the present day, and a group of male soldiers fleeing an ambush during the First English Civil War. I thought this atmosphere was maintained well through both stories and it was easy to see as it went on where certain plot points were starting to converge or echo each other. I also found it to be the main drawback. I usually find in a book which is split between two different plotlines that there’s always one that becomes more interesting, and in this case, the chapters featuring the soldiers were far better, in my opinion. I thought the development of the characters of the soldier were far more distinct and well-drawn; the women in the present day felt more like cardboard cutouts, with the exception of Nuria and Alice. It made it harder for me to care about what happened to them.

This was a shame as I thought there were some interesting parallels between the two different plotlines, the characters, and how they reacted to the things that were happening to them. I don’t know if there was meant to be significance in making the group in the future all women, but I did think there were some interesting differences in how their stories played out, as well as similarities.

I also would have liked the ending to be a little bit more definitive, but at the same time, I knew a few chapters in this book wasn’t going to have a neat ending. This book is what it is: it’s creeping, unsettling, dark, weird, with some moments of genuinely beautiful storytelling. If you want to read a folk horror that focuses more on creating a sense of unease than shocking you, this would be perfect. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy of this book.

Content Notes: Violence, gun violence, scenes of warfare, death, blood, serious injuries, animal death, gore.

As always I want to start by saying that I was given a copy of this to review. My review is honest and left voluntarily and avoids spoilers. #Rebellion #Solaris #FionaBarnett #TheDarkBetweenTheTrees #Netgalley

I adore horror and it’s subgenres but the idea of folk and cosmic horrors are some of my favourites. The Dark Between the Trees merges these genres with elements of historical fiction and survival horror was to create a superbly atompsheric novel that is perfect for spooky season, or if you love horror all year.

Following dual narratives Barnett creates a bridge between time as we follow a small group of Parliamentarian soldiers in 1643 were seventeen men entered the woods but only two were ever found again and five women in present day in search of the evidence of the missing group and what really happened all those years ago.

Of course there are some tropes that may seem familiar, starting to feel watched while traversing the woods, the group beginning to fall out and so on but Barnett takes these tropes and makes them their own. The suspense is kept through-out and you are always left wondering who will survive or who will get out alive.

I particularly enjoyed the alternating chapters between past and present and seeing how both groups are seemingly following the same path as the other. It added to the sense of uncanny and unease. We already know that most of the soldiers are never seen again but we don’t know why and has the present day group follow the same route we begin to wonder if history will repeat itself.

I particularly loved the end. Again spoiler free, but how the idea of history continuing to repeat is presented in a sort of spiral starting again. Definitely one to read if you love folk horror and a well developed plot. The characters were not all likable and I did find myself a little detached from a few but it didn’t take away my enjoyment. I will definitely be recommending it to those who love a good atmospheric read.

The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett is an eerily creepy tale. It straddles the border of horror and scifi, with rich descriptions and fully-realized characters. The narrative bounces between present day and past, giving the reader a dawning sense of dread over what awaits our protagonists. Definitely one for fans of movies like The Descent and The Ritual.

8.5/10

Thank you to Rebellion Publishing for accepting my eArc request on Netgalley for this book. As always this doesn’t affect the honesty of my review!

Hello again dear reader, it is October and spooky season is on 🎃. So how about a review for a surrealist gothic folk-thriller?? That sounds like a bit of a mouthful but broken down in other terms this is the kind of book that is 80% just supernatural vibes surrounding a very simple plot that will have you coming out of it more than a little confused but satisfied nonetheless.

Barnett employs one of the story telling devices I enjoy the most which is unfolding parallel plots, one in the past and one in the present.

I love the way these two storylines always complement each other, as well as how one can foreshadow what might happen to the other or alternatively become a red herring rather so that you never quite know what to expect.

Moreover the author knows how to create ambiance so that even while I was reading this under the summer sun and at the beach, I felt that little tendril of fog crawl up my spine. I also loved how much the author worked the forest’s sounds into the narrative, going further that just mentioning bird song or the wind among the branches. Moresby Wood felt like more of a living breathing character than any of the protagonists and honestly? I wasn’t even too mad about it.

As I said at the start, this was more about the vibes than anything to me and I reveled in it.

This did mean however that I had a bit of a hard time singling out characters or needing a while to figure out that the pov had actually changed until I got more familiar with all the individual names. Some stood out more than others of course but even then I occasionally lost a beat in needing to figure out whose eyes I was seeing through exactly. (Side note this only happened within either of the two timelines of course, as past and present were clearly divided.)

That said, Barnett also did a great job at showing characters slowly devolving at their worst, emotionally and psychologically breaking them down, each in the different ways that come with wildly different personalities! Be it a group of tired academics or scared and wounded soldiers, each trying to figure out an ancient curse or myth that cannot be unraveled, in order to leave the place that has become their ever changing and predatory prison.

I also really liked Dr Alice Christopher’s monomania over uncovering the secrets of what happened to the soldiers that got lost in the wood, having dedicated her entire academic career to it. Our very own modern Captain Ahab! I feel like any academic can relate to her when it comes to struggling for funding their research. Whereas Nuria, a student at the end of her dissertation, was the character I could relate to more and ultimately felt the most for.

Monomaniacal characters are extremely fascinating to me, especially when the author can show that devolution or character decay in a gradual but inexorable manner that really hooks the reader. Barnett, I think, did pretty well in that regard here!

As for the overall plot it’s fairly straightforward and when you come right down to it not much actually happens rather than is witnessed by the characters, and, by the very end, the story definitely doesn’t resolve itself in any way that I would’ve expected. I feel like that was the point though all along. Sometimes you don’t find the answers and there’s nothing you can do about it. Or the ones that you do find are not what you wanted.

The very end of the book even left me quite impressed as I found it quite a gutsy move to wrap things up the way that Barnett did. To me it fit within the whole theme and vibe of the story but to others it may seem completely different if not downright contentious! I’m actually looking forward to more people reading this so that I can discuss it with someone!

The Dark Between the Trees comes out tomorrow October 11th and it is the perfect spooky and eerie read for anyone looking for a gothic folk story with incredible ambiance, creatures that prowl in the dark and an enemy that isn’t quite what you’d expect. Also, if you’re in any way involved in academia this book will speak to your deepest peeves and you’ll feel understood hahah.

Until next time,

Eleni A. E.

In 1643, a small group of soldiers under ambush make a desperate and unfortunate decision to enter Moresby Woods, an area known to be the home of an unnatural monster. Seventeen soldiers enter, only two escape.
Now, a research group is on a mission to discover what really happened to those soldiers. Armed with the written account of one of the soldiers and an old map, plus every electronic gadget they can carry, they enter the woods. But nothing can prepare them for what they find...
It took me a long time to try and review this book. I finished and sat thinking "Wow what the heck did I just read?" Don't get me wrong, I was glued to the page, wrapped up in the suspense, anxious for the characters, and wondering who will survive, if any. But... how to describe it?!! Trust me, read it for yourself if you love spooky books!
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

You know that deeply unsettling sense you sometimes get when you’re deep in the forest or bush, or walking past it, where it feels like someone is watching you?

It’s a cloyingly unnerving sense that you are not alone, egged on by flashes of movement you swear you see in your peripheral vision or a strange occurrence of that evolutionarily advantageous sense that someone is behind you, soon to attack you.

It’s almost always a product of an overactive imagination, but in the case of The Dark Between the Trees, the superbly creepy new novel from Fiona Barnett, it’s real, it’s happening and it must be heeded.

Not that anyone in the group who enters Moresby Wood in the middle of England is giving any talk of bogeymen and monsters much heed, despite the legion of folk tales that something very dark and wholly untroubling lurks in the dark interior of the ancient forest.

Led by Dr Alice Christopher, who is an expert on the Wood and the history of the 17th century group of Parliamentarian soldiers who fled into it never to be seen again, bar two survivors with impossible-to-believe stories to tell, the group of academics also includes Christopher’s student, Nuria Martins, who simply wants to be in a library somewhere reading and writing, and who, rather wisely, has a bad feeling about venturing near the place that is creepy in just about every possible way.

She should, naturally, have heeded her inner intuitive warnings.

For in the grand style of every seemingly innocent study that reduces down scary folk tales down to academic musing, Christopher has grossly underestimated what lies deep in Moresby Wood, a place of witches and monsters where the Devil himself is said to roam, seeking those whom he may devour.

The good doctor believes none of this, though she is convinced that there is something utterly otherworldly and strange about the Wood, something that defies common sense and logic and which places this near-magical forest into a realm far beyond our modern rationalist digital age.

But rationalism is as much a victim as the foolhardy souls who brave the Wood, as The Dark Between the Trees progresses chillingly ever onward, deeper into the trees which confoundingly seem to shift at will, there one night and gone the next morning, something both the academics and soldiers experience, their stories told in alternating chapters that don’t ever interrupt the story flow but burnish and build it until you are looking far too intently in the shadows lurking in the corners of your room or questioning the seeming blurs of movement that seem to occur on the very margins of your sight.

Much as Christopher and the others in her group treat the folk tales of many centuries old as hearsay and curiosities, the reality is that Moresby Wood cares nothing for their remove from its magical terror, every bit as it disregards Parliamentarian leader Captain Davies who treats with contempt some of the local soldiers’ tales of darkness at work within the trees which you treat lightly at your peril.

Quite what lurks in the murky scariness of The Dark Between the Trees is left, as much as it is explained at all – the sense of mystery that Barnett creates and masterful sustains is a thing of brilliance and finely wrought fright – to the final chapters of a novel that leaves you guessing throughout while waving a thrillingly intense story of how easily the bonds between us fray when unbridled terror makes its unwelcome presence felt.

It is the way a shared sense of community between very different people, some reluctantly thrown together like the soldiers, or mostly drawn together willingly like the academics, very quickly unravels that makes The Dark Between the Trees such a fascinating read.

This fracturing of group unity is something we see in a lot of creepy adventures into the unknown, one of the most memorable examples for this reviewer being the film Annihilation, but Barnett uses it superlatively well, underscoring how much the mental and emotional stresses of the barely seen or understood threat plaguing both groups is really what drives them into danger, more so than what is possibly pursuing them through the woods.

There is, of course, something darkly, devilishly dangerous in Moresby Wood and it makes it ancient presence felt in ways that fuel the narrative in ways terrifying and freakishly alarming, but there are more than a few occasions whenever the idea of whatever lurks in the shadows and blurred movement is far less of a threat than the way in which the beleaguered members of the two groups surrender any sense of rationality or quiet comfort in the known and well-established civilisational norms.

Again, while the monster within versus than without is hardly a new idea in these types of stories, Barnett consistently uses it thrillingly well, very quickly and with surprising depth acquainting us with characters who we come to understand thoroughly enough that their actions quickly make sense to us, allowing us to identify with a situation which is fantastical, yes, but also intensely, relatably human.

We all fear what we can’t explain and while many cling to civilisational certainty and the power of logic and clear thinking, the idea that something scary this may comes, something well beyond the rational status quo, it’s all too easy to throw that to the panicked wind, giving in to an evolutionary holdover that suspects we are always in danger and that it lurks in places long held to be evil, a designation that we often easily ridicule, but do not easily, or without great cost, cast aside.

In fact, try as they might, neither Davies nor Christopher, as the leaders of their respective groups, can silence the talk of Devilish mayhem, nor put aside the idea that the Wood exists in a dark realm with which we are poorly acquainted, and it’s this great battle between mind and instinct that makes The Dark Between the Trees such a terrifically (in the true sense of the word) frightening but enthrallingly clever read, one that lingers with you long after the final page is turn, leaving you wondering if something didn’t just rush by you, just out of rational sight …

A perfect spooky season read!

Five women head into the Moresby Woods….Dr Christopher - obsessed with what happened there many years ago, the other ladies, each with their own role to play in the expedition (not quite) blindly following her lead…

The old stories…the monster….absolutely ridiculous old tales…

Switching between the past and the ladies, this is a great creepy read, a must for the spooky season! It left me with a chill..

My thanks to Netgalley and Rebellion for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review

I found the book to be engaging but I would have liked the creature to be a little more fleshed out. There were some unanswered questions that could have been resolved. Other than that, I found it a creepy read, but in a good way.

*3.5*

I struggled with this rating a little bit. Like I enjoyed it, you know the forest setting was spot on. I really felt like I was there and you get that isolation unsettling feeling along with the characters. The book did a great job at making you feel disoriented. The compass never worked, the direction and items changed. You know it was made to make you feel confused which it certainly did. One thing that I struggled with was the alternating point of views. We would have the past and something would happen and then it would cut to the present and the same thing would happen. I just preferred the past point of view because all this creepy stuff was happening for the first time, when we got to the present it just seemed unnecessarily repetitive. I would’ve preferred one or the other. And by the time we got to the final scene I just didn't care that much at that point and how it ended didn't seem like the same story that I started with.

Thank you to NetGalley and Solaris for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC, in exchange for an honest review!

I thought that this book started off strong. My only initial complaint was that the character descriptions were so brief, that I had a hard time remembering who was who. You can tell that the characters with more description were the main characters, which I feel spoiled a bit of the book. If you have a group of characters but only bother to describe a few in detail, you can tell right off the bat that the other ones aren’t worth remembering or learning too much about. I enjoyed the two different timelines, and liked bouncing back and forth between them. It did get a bit repetitive since the same things seemed to be happening in each timeline and it sometimes felt like I was reading a scenario twice. I read this mostly at night and enjoyed the atmosphere and creepy bits! The story seemed to go a bit downhill towards the end. The ending was predictable and didn’t really have a conclusion, which I didn’t like. Overall, it was a fast read that was enjoyable, but had a few flaws.

A promising gothic premise with excellent buildup that unfortunately drags on endlessly without any real action and fails to deliver.

The Dark Between The Trees had all the elements for a good Halloween read: an eerie folklore about a demonic creature, an out-of-bounds forest, dual timelines set about three hundred years apart told through multiple perspectives, lots of telltales, and an incredible atmosphere, but even with this great package, it failed to make any impact.

Seventeen soldiers enter the Moresby forest in 1643 despite being warned by some from their own company, of the infamous cursed woods and the monster that inhabits it. Only two survivors make it back and their accounts of shifting landscapes and a stalking monster don’t make much sense. Fast forward to today, a group of five women are all set to explore the same route the soldiers took and figure out the cause behind their disappearance.

The best part about this book is the atmosphere. The shifting landscapes are well explained, and even though it’s a bizarre concept, Barnett makes it believable. The ‘woods within the woods’ concept could initially throw you off, but as you delve further, you’d begin to understand the graphics. Although never confirmed, it points out intersecting dimensions and entities that roam freely through them, or let’s just say that’s how I interpreted it. Through the multitude of PoVs, the buildup of tension is slow but steady and quite natural.

Now onto the things I disliked: the endless dragging on of the invisible monstrosity. People keep getting killed but not once, anyone sees anything. There’s so much buildup that you’d expect a huge reveal at the end, or at least a face-off, but there is absolutely nothing. Whether it’s the soldiers or the women's squad, everyone is walking in loops, seeing the same things again and again, and still trying to sound excited. The repetition is frustrating. The book ended on, I don’t even know what to call it, a bizarre suspended idea - you know, basically left hanging without any explanation. No questions answered, no cliffhanger, just a bland unresolved climax!

Overall, excellent atmosphere, and eerie vibes, but the redundancy and loose ends make it an unsatisfying read.

Thanks to Rebellion, Solaris and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Publication Date: October 11th, 2022.

3.25/5🌟 (rounded down).

An expedition of 5 women head into Moresby Wood, hoping to discover the fate of a group of soldiers who vanished 350 years earlier. 2 men abandoned their group early on and survived, talling a tale of an unseen, stealthy creature within the woods and changing terrain and landmarks.

This is a dual timeline story, with the chapters alternating between the past and present stories and multiple points of view. The characters in both storylines quickly began to succumb to the panic and paranoia of being lost as their numbers began to dwindle. Time, location and reality took on a sense of fluidity and deception. The forest gained an ominous and claustrophobic feel as rain and a disorienting mist set in. I found the setting and atmosphere of this story to be both immersive and ominous, with touches of almost alien otherness.

A few things didn't work well for me. The alternating storylines did serve to keep me turning the pages, but the story structure also felt somewhat awkward and confusing. I found the present day story more intriguing, so it was often frustrating that just as the story gained some momentum the chapter would end and we'd move to the other storyline.

Overall, this was an atmospheric folk horror tale with some genuinely creepy moments, a terrifying unseen enemy, and a alowly building sense of dread and hopelessness. I didn't find the story as engrossing as I'd hoped I would; however, I still enjoyed my time spent in Moresby Forest. Fans of slower paced, nature based horror stories will find plenty to like here.

Thank you to both Netgalley and Rebellion for providing a copy for me to read and review.

I don't often read horror, so was looking forward to this, as it seemed more 'folk horror' than 'blood and guts' horror. The premise of the story sounded great, but I had no idea as to what would even happen......

I liked the female group - I could relate to each of them in turn - their moods, their personalities, their flaws. If you've ever worked in an office, you'll have met someone like each of these women. Same goes for the group of soldiers - a band of brothers with a common cause, to get out of the forest, albeit in very different ways (although the choice had been taken form them).

I was a little disappointed that the 'beast' that was following them wasn't elaborated on more, but it certainly was sinister.

I found the ending a little too abrupt, but then again, it left a few things to the readers imagination. I think I do need to read it again.

I just could not get into this book at all! It did not grip me, I did not feel the atmosphere - just dual timelines with dialogue.

I do not know what exactly I was expecting from this book, but nevertheless, it did not deliver.

While reading the book, I felt like I did not care about the characters, the timelines, or the happenings... I just don't know, it just did not gel with me at all.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC!

The Dark Between the Trees had all the elements of a good isolation/fear of the woods horror story. Although the characters weren’t completely alone, the dread that I felt made it feel like they were alone and I was alone too.

The story is told from multiple points of view and follows two groups of people from different time periods. A group of academics, from the present explore a forest that has been under the umbrella of haunted and possessed for hundreds of years. The second is a group of military men from the past who were attacked by a mysterious enemy. The story switches between the two time periods and the two groups.

Great story, well fleshed out characters.

I am not always a huge fan of multiple time lines, and this book is not exception unfortunately. I kept getting confused about who was who and what was going on which was taking away from my overall enjoyment. However, it was a decent book and do suggest checking it out!

The Dark between the Trees simultaneously tells two stories. The first centres around Dr Alice Christopher and a group of archaeologists who enter a wood in an unspecified area in the north of England called Moresby Wood. The purpose of the expedition is to find out what happened to a group of Parliamentarian soldiers that went missing at the beginning of the English Civil War, who according to local legend mysteriously disappeared in Moresby Wood.

The second story is the story of the soldiers who went missing and what actually happened to them. It transpires that after being ambushed close to the wood, they sought refuge in the haunted place that locals tell is full of ghosts, witches and a monstrous evil that has resided there ages before the dawn of man.

I have to say that I was so conflicted about this as I wanted to like this book more than I actually did!

Unfortunately, I have to say that I never really got wholly on board with the book at all!

Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good bits in it. The ending is fantastic, but as I said I just couldn’t gel with the rest of the book.

I think one of the reasons was that due to there being two narratives, I never really clicked with the characters. At times. I was lost with who was who. Particularly with the story of the Roundhead soldiers who ultimately become lost in the wood.

However, similarly I didn’t really gel with the group of scientists whose experiences mirror those of the soldiers.

When I originally requested this, I expected that it would be chock full of atmosphere and foreboding, but somehow, I just didn’t get that overarching sense and at times I was hoping that the end would come in order to tell me what the actual hell was going on. And also similarly with the story of the characters in the soldiers aspect, I never really connected with the party of women who become lost too.

Like I said. I really wanted to like this and was disappointed when I didn’t get along with it as well as I thought I would. There is no doubt about it that Fiona Barnett is a good writer and that she will be a name to watch. I liked her characterisations, but I thought with the story split into two they unfortunately did not develop enough to make me care.

Her ability to build tension throughout the narrative is good too. Especially when both parties ultimately end up disintegrating and the conflict that ensues between the two parties is really good to watch (read), but ultimately, it did not strike that chord with me that made me want to care.

Similarly with her particular brand of horror. One of the things that drew me to the book is that I find stories set in this particular time in history to be really creepy. I think it may be due to the fact that I grew up on British horror films, and some of my favourites are from Tigon pictures. Films like Blood on Satan’s Claw, or Witchfinder General. And more recently The Vvitch, even Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Millar’s The Crucible all strike that same level of unease. I don’t know, for me it just oozes atmosphere. I think it is the juxtaposition of being just on the cusp of modernity, and those old folkloric ideologies that just strike that sense of fear.

And Fiona Barnett does manage manage to evoke that sense of fear and the claustrophobia of the setting. However, I just didn’t get that sustained sense of that particular atmosphere, and at times I lost it a bit, which was a shame.

All in all, this is my experience with the book. I am not dissing it, but telling you that I didn’t get along with it. There are far more people who did and loved it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them.

In horror novels nothing good ever comes of going into the woods and Fiona Barnett’s The Dark Between the Trees striking debut just goes to show that nothing ever changes. At first glance and after reading the blurb you may very well stick your nose up at this novel as the plot sounds derivative of many other ‘creature in the woods’ plotlines, however, it puts a very clever and ultimately fresh spin on an old trope. Even if the pace is slow (probably too slow for some), it is deliberately so and I found myself sucked into the uneasiness and surreal nature of the unfolding split narratives.

The blurb sells The Dark Between the Trees as a “surrealist gothic folk-thriller for fans of The Ritual and The Descent (I’m thinking of the film, rather than the magnificent Jeff Long novel). Blurbs often overegg novels but this is relatively accurate, it has some of the latter in that like The Descent one of the two story strands features only women and like The Ritual the group get lost in a forest and are stalked by a creature. Beyond that the comparisons are rather superficial and it is the differences which make The Dark Between the Trees an impressive novel, this is significantly more than a creature in the woods novel and in many ways the creature becomes side-lined as events get progressively stranger.

In The Ritual we wait and wait for the creature to finally appear, however, this is nothing compared to The Dark Between the Trees, but this never becomes problematic as the interaction between the characters is much too good to hinder the story. So, if you are after a slasher/creature in the woods kind of read, then look elsewhere, this is much more thoughtful and is heading away from genre into literary fiction territory. Considering the majority of the novel is set in a forest, another interesting deviation from The Ritual, was the fact that Fiona Barnett did not dwell on overlong or detailed descriptions of the locality, but still managed to develop both atmosphere and a strange sense of otherworldliness and isolation.

The dual narratives set in 1643 and the present day was a real strength of the novel and I loved the way in which they in some respects mirrored each other, deviated in other places, with their very different personal circumstances unable to change fate. The soldiers of 1643 were all God-fearing men, which led to their own clashes, whilst the women in the present-day narrative believed in science, archaeology and logic, but found themselves at odds in having to accept the impossible. By way of a taster, on their first night they camp in a clearing with a huge tree, but in the morning the tree is gone. How do they explain this rationally or irrationally for that matter? How could they return to their university funding boards and reveal this astonishing fact? The arguments, conversations and sheer incredulity of five very intelligent women made riveting reading and was in stark contrast to the soldiers of 1643 who were much more open to accepting the supernatural.

Even though Fiona Barnett chooses to avoid heavy descriptions of Moresby Wood this not make this Northern England location any the less intriguing and I was quickly reaching for Google to see if such a place existed, but I will let you check yourself should you wish to find out more. Straight from the outset the forest, which was fenced off with barbed wire, radiated a dangerous vibe which clashed with the jovial mood of the five women who were attempting to follow in the footsteps of the group of soldiers (told in the other narrative) who disappeared in 1643. I quickly found myself tuned into both time periods and as the technology strangely failed in the modern narrative the women were quickly more vulnerable than their 1643 counterparts, who at least were armed and seasoned fighting men.

Dr Alice Christopher, an historian who has devoted her entire academic career to uncovering the secrets of Moresby Wood leads the party. Through her we realise that the area is deep with folktales and myths which the book cleverly explores, some of which predate the ill-fated 1643 expedition into the forest. Armed with metal detectors, GPS units, mobile phones and the most recent map of the area (which is nearly 50 years old), her group enters the wood ready for anything, but soon find themselves quickly out of their depth and clashing about what to do next and they begin to dream of the nice cosy library they left behind. These are not adventurer Indiana Jones types, with the narrative concentrating on a couple of the women.

By contract the 1643 group is significantly bigger and so there is more opportunity for death, savagery and the creature making a slightly more visible appearance. Veterans of the English Civil War, many of which had not seen their families for a long time, they were a sympathetic bunch with the plot following a slightly more traditional horror story arc. The manner in which the stories converged was wild stuff, even if not all questions were answered, it was creative and entertaining stuff.

The Dark Between the Trees has a lot to offer and the title gives a minor clue in what to expect, with ‘between’ the key word. Whilst the characters have their own motives, and there are many of them, the narratives were impressively distinct and once the reader realises this is much more than a monster novel it gets more enjoyable. The sense of hopelessness and dread is skilfully heightened as we realise maps and technology are useless in the vividly drawn Moresby Wood.

I had high hopes for this book, but it failed to meet my expectations on several levels. My first issue was that I had trouble keeping any of the characters straight in the older storyline. There were too many names right off the bat and everyone blended together. The characters in the present timeline were more fleshed out, but still hard to connect with. My main issue though was the sluggish pace. While the descriptions of the setting and atmosphere of isolation and foreboding were well written, it took forever for anything interesting to happen. I almost gave up on it multiple times, and while things did start to pick up in the last third, the abrupt ending and lack of resolution was disappointing. I could see this story working well as a movie, but as a book, it was lacking.