DNF at page 173 or 57%

Super bored by the soldiers timeline and while I found the researchers timeline interesting at first, it soon became tiresome as well.

There were lots of good things in this debut novel but, for me, it wasn't a satisfying read.

I admired the way The Darkness Between The Trees was structured and the way it used narrative to pursue a complicated and counter-intuitive possibility.

The Darkness Between The Trees used dual timelines to drive the novel in a way that made them more than a device for amping up the suspense by jumping between the two timelines at key moments and using the Then timeline to reveal things that change how the Now timeline is seen Here, the timelines interacted in a powerful and unusual way firstly because the people in the present-day timeline are aware of and actively seeking signs of the people in the English Civil War timeline and secondly because the two groups are sharing the same space, Moresby Woods at different times. It's soon clear that Moresby Woods does strange things to both space and time and the way the timelines are written starts subtly to promote the idea that the two timelines, instead of being sequential are, in some strange way, simultaneous. The first time we know for sure that the two groups are at exactly the same place in different times is when they shelter under a huge oak tree. It's a disquieting experience for both groups and it started leading my imagination along a path where it seemed possible that space might be more important than time in Moresby Woods.

I liked the way the differences and similarities between the groups in each timeline were used to change how I saw Moresby Woods. In each timeline, the groups undergo similar experiences as the weirdness and then the threat to life of travelling through Moresby woods presses in on them. Initially, the differences between the two groups seemed stark. The 1649 group are all male. They have a clear hierarchy. They all believe in God and the devil and the possibility of losing their immortal souls. They start their journey already traumatised by an ambush that wiped out half of their number. The present-day group are all female. They are a mix of academics and forest rangers with a hierarchy that shifts according to circumstance. They all default to a scientific, rational view of the world. They start their journey believing themselves to be safe. The longer the two groups travel in the woods and the more attrition they suffer, the more similar they become. In both groups, stress produces a struggle for leadership. Both groups split between a minority who accept what they see around them and try to learn more about it and those who retreat into their core religious or scientific beliefs as a refuge against or denial of the strangeness that is enveloping them. Both groups start to suffer a loss of agency and begin to surrender themselves to fate.

One of the problems I had with the book was that I found the storytelling in the 1649 timeline to be much more compelling than the storytelling in the contemporary timeline. Partly that was because the 1649 timeline is very well done. The language worked and the attitudes and actions of the people felt authentic. Also, the 1649 storyline starts in blood and carnage and moves swiftly into fear of the unknown and the unnatural, whereas the contemporary timeline has the task of setting both the context for the expedition in terms of academic politics and the historical context and local legends that apply to the 1649 timeline and starts slowly with five women walking through the woods, getting spooked by an unnatural event, getting lost and then arguing about which direction to walk in. I struggled to become engaged with the contemporary timeline not so much because less was going on but because the point of view from which the story was being told kept moving around, lessening the coherence of the experience. By contrast, the 1649 story is told mainly from the point of view of the Captain and one of his Sergeants.

One of the strengths of the book is that it suceeds in making Moresby Woods feel like a threatening presence in both timelines. The academics in the contemporary timeline are able to deny the threat for a little longer that the soldiers in 1649 because they see themselves as competent and rational and they've chosen to be in the woods. The first death in the contemporary timeline changes the tone and starts to bring the experience of the two groups closer together.

I found the last twenty per cent of the story hard to read because, on both timelines, things had become dire. Both stories were filled with unremitting fear and coated in a sort of acceptance that was less fatalism and more an analogue of a wounded animal going into shock. It was well done but hard to bear.

Towards the end of the book, the cast of characters has reduced in both timelines. I liked the contrast between the two groups in the motivation for those who remained and who chose to move forward. The soldiers in 1649 felt the pull of fate and duty and a need to know while the academics were pulled by a determination to be right and an inability to say no.

I hadn't realised how much the book was wearing on my emotions until, with ten per cent left, Alice the leader of the contemporary expedition had a thought that made me go: "That's exactly how I feel too." Here's the line that did it for me:

"{ALICE} couldn't rest here either and she knew it. Onwards to the end which was coming. She had to keep going. If there was something to find out, she had to get to it."

When I reached the end, I found that, while I admired Fiona Barnett's courage in pursuing the central idea behind Moresby Wood to its logical and perhaps inevitable conclusion, I didn't enjoy where she took me.

There was more to admire than to regret in this debut novel and will be looking out for more work from Fiona Barnett.

I recommend the audiobook version of The Darkness Between The Trees, both of the narrators: Vicky Hall, for the contemporary timeline and Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong for the 1649 timeline, did a great job. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2022/06/202275-dark-between-trees-fiona-barnett.h... ( )