The Woodcutter

Written by Kate Danley

Narrated by Sarah Coomes

Deep within the Wood, a young woman lies dead. Not a mark on her body. No trace of her murderer. Only her chipped glass slippers hint at her identity.

The Woodcutter, keeper of the peace between the Twelve Kingdoms of Man and the Realm of the Faerie, must find the maiden’s killer before others share her fate. Guided by the wind and aided by three charmed axes won from the River God, the Woodcutter begins his hunt, searching for clues in the whispering dominions of the enchanted unknown.

But quickly he finds that one murdered maiden is not the only nefarious mystery afoot: one of Odin’s hellhounds has escaped, a sinister mansion appears where it shouldn’t, a pixie dust drug trade runs rampant, and more young girls go missing. Looming in the shadows is the malevolent, power-hungry queen, and she will stop at nothing to destroy the Twelve Kingdoms and annihilate the Royal Fae…unless the Woodcutter can outmaneuver her and save the gentle souls of the Wood.

Blending magic, heart-pounding suspense, and a dash of folklore, The Woodcutter is an extraordinary retelling of the realm of fairy tales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Nov 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469248363

Kate Danley

Kate Danley, an award-winning actress, playwright, and author, is a member of the Acme Comedy Improv and sketch troupes in Los Angeles. Her plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, and the Washington, DC/Baltimore area. Danley’s screenplay Fairy Blood won first place in the Breckenridge Festival of Film screenwriting competition in the action/adventure category. Her debut novel, The Woodcutter, was honored with the Garcia Award for the best fiction book of the year, was the first place fantasy book in the Reader Views Literary Awards, and the winner of the sci-fi/fantasy category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Kate currently lives in Burbank, California, and works by day as office manager for education and exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

Reviews for The Woodcutter

[paxtondeonnia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Took a bit to get into, but highly enjoyed it. For me it was fairyland's version of law and order

[patibh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

La historia es fenomenal, hizo que rememorara esos cuentos de hadas de toda la vida. Espero que la hagan película pronto.

[Hessah · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

An attempt to create a failed Alice in wonderland!
This has been an obsolete waste of my time.

[jsabrina-219220 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This little book was a delightful surprise: a dark, slightly twisted revision of the classic Grimm's fairy tales with an original new character holding the strands together. It's beautifully written, and the central character, although fairy-tale simple in some ways, won my heart. Definitely recommended.

[jayeless-698797 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If you like retellings of fairy tales, you will probably like this. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but by the time I was getting to the end I had some reservations.

The main problem I had with the book was that there was no real causality. It was dreamlike in that way. If something bad happened, you didn't have to worry, because ~*~magic~*~ would set things right again in some unforeseen way. The characters were paper-thin, too, so it was impossible to get invested in the narrative. The saving grace was that it was easy to get swept along by the words. (Jan 2015)

[longdogmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Something a little different for anyone who grew up reading and living fairytales. Beautifully written, it draws you in to a fantastical story that seems familiar, but is all together new and unpredictable. Made me want to get back to reading it to see what would happen next.

[julesgdside · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

interesting approach, interesting writing style. reading about the fairy tales of my childhood from a different perspective. I enjoyed this book very much.

[fyrefly98 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Summary: The Woodcutter is the guardian of the Forest, the place where all the fairy tales converge. He's used to the comings and goings, but now things have started to become strange - the young girl and her grandmother, instead of escaping, falls prey to the Beast, and the Woodcutter is too late to save them. He realizes that something is terribly wrong - that someone is stealing the magic of the forest and killing its inhabitants in the process - so he sets out to determine the cause of the problem, and to stop it, if he can.Review: I should have liked this more than I did. Stories where all of the fairytales are happening at once should be my bread and butter, but something about this story unfortunately failed to work for me. Part of it I think was the writing style -- it was lovely, but I was expecting something more like Alethea Kontis's Woodcutters books, something a little less lyrical and more snappy, which was not at all the case, so the meandering, lyrical language of this book didn't entirely connect with me or my mood. I also felt like the various elements of the plot didn't hang together or interconnect as tightly as they should have. It did capture the feel of a fairy tale fairly well, with lots of short scenes, and fast transitions between the stages of the Woodcutter's quest, but not a lot of development within each scene, or connection between them. I also felt that every time I was starting to get a handle on what was happening, a new element or a new twist would be introduced, so I wound up never entirely understanding what was going on with the pixies, the magic, the blue vs. red blood, the dust, the woods, the kingdoms, etc. So this was interesting, but ultimately not entirely satisfying. 3 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: This one didn't entirely work for me, but if you're in the mood for a lyrical, musing fairy tale, and don't go in expecting something it's not, you might have better luck.

[passion4reading_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Woodcutter lives in the Wood connecting the Twelve Kingdoms, keeping the peace between humans and the fae. One night he comes across the body of a princess with glass slippers, and shortly after those of a little girl in a red cape and her grandmother; all of them didn't have a mark on them but had been mortally afraid. Knowing that something terrible stalks the Wood, he sets off to defeat it, and uncovers a terrible conspiracy. This short novel reads very much like an old-fashioned fairy tale, with Kate Danley's economic yet poetic prose taking you back in time to your childhood when the stories of princes and princesses and true love's first kiss, enchanted woods, witches and evil queens were as familiar to you as the back of your hand, giving you a first taste of good and bad, right and wrong, love and death. She takes all those stories and mixes them together into something new, and half the fun to me was recognising old friends. Her characters have true emotional depth, in particular the titular figure of the Woodcutter himself, and I warmed to him immediately. Even though it's impossible not to read the final few chapters without thinking of religious symbolism, by the end I was in tears, and if the story doesn't move you, then you truly have a heart of stone and deserve no better. I believe this is one of those books that gets better at each re-reading as you discover references and nuances you missed before.

[jlsimon7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a story that weaves elements of many of the classic fairy tales together through the evolvement of the protagonist "The Woodcutter." Even a few classic nursery rhymes are included. So of course you see, Snow White, and Aurora, but you also see Jack from the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, and even the characters from "Three Billie Goats Gruff," and several other classic tales. It was wonderfully entertaining.

The Woodcutter emerges in each of these stories assisting the characters to find their true love and true loves first kiss without actually retelling those stories. This is not a repeat of the classic fairy tales, more of a behind the scenes kind of thing.

I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a relapse into childhood adventure from time to time.

I would further recommend this story to anyone who has a dark book list. Now and then, something a little uplifting is a good thing.

[lucifey · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This had potential but ended up being kind of a mess.

[laurenmae85-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to like this. The concept seemed right up my alley-a convergence of famous characters from classic fairy tales and mythology. The plot centers around The Woodcutter, who lives in an enchanted forest connecting twelve magical kingdoms and is responsible for maintaing the balance between good and evil. When he discovers a dead Cinderella on his forest floor, he begins a quest to discover the root of the increasingly gruesome events developing in the kingdoms, threatening the peace and harmony between the fae and man.But despite the appeal of the general idea of this story, the execution just didn't cut it for me. I felt the plot was muddled and awkward. I often found myself wondering what it was I had just read. Though we may already be familiar with many of them, the characters came off as flat and bland. I think the writing style focused too much on coming off as poetic (and didn't quiet pull it off), largely at the sacrifice of the overall quality of the story. It was hard to feel engaged and I remained pretty ambivalent about what happened. This definitely isn't the worst thing I've ever read and it is well intentioned, but overall I a bit disappointed.

[imyril · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Disappointing. I found this simplistic and shallow, leaning heavily on the fairytale sources with little originality mixed in to freshen it up. Probably better aimed at kids / very early teens.

[cericlark · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book while holidaying in Cypress. I finished it in two days which is a reflection of how good it is. I can spend months reading a book I'm not keen on and have been known to cheekily take a sneak peak at Wikipedia for the synopsis to bluff my way through a Reading Group evening....The story was beautifully written and at one point I thought to myself it was like poetry. I'm not a fan of poetry normally but the way the story unfolded evoked emotions and reveries which added to the ambience.The Woodcutter is the guardian of the Wood. He is a powerful man who doesn't seem to covet power - he does what he must. An evil queen is trying to take over the twelve kingdoms and he is the only person who can stop her.From Snow White to Baba Yaga to Odin, the tale covers many legends and fairy stories of yore. The main characters are fleshed out, the Woodcutters wife waiting at home the only thing keeping him going at times. It blends them to a perfect mix which I thoroughly enjoyed.This kind of book is the reason I created the book group in the first place! I'm now looking forward to the next book...

[silverlily26 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a wonderful re-write of some of the classic fairy and folk folks, centering around the woodcutter. The only negative was the very short chapters in the eBook version, some not even a page. If you like fairy tales you will enjoy this.

[srearley · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I finished it, but I'm not sure I really enjoyed it. I'm trying to read a lot of fairy tale retellings, and I was fascinated by this one, but it really ended up being something I just slogged through to see where the author actually went with it.

The style was very off-putting, very distant, I couldn't get a very good read on any of the characters -- most of them didn't even have names! I was looking for the ways that she incorporated the different fairy tales, and that was interesting, but I when I was finished, I was glad to be done.

[tadad_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Woodcutter is a book that reminded me of quite a few other books. It's a fairy tale so, of course, one cannot help but think of the Grimm Brothers. But the stories were changed just enough that I thought of McKinley, perhaps Rose Daughter or Spindle's End.And, since it uses a dozen or so other fairy tales as source material, it reminds me of some of the old standbys that use that device such as Myers' Silverlock. The mood in much of it has that slightly dreamy air of McKillip's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. The characters, especially the evil ones such at The Gentleman, occupy archetypal rather than individual roles, evoking Tepper's True Game, especially the first trilogy.And the protagonist wouldn't have been out of place in a de Lint novel....and so on.In a way, that sums up my feeling about this book. It was interesting and well-written, and the fundamental premise was original enough, and I found it engrossing and fun and I liked reading it…but it didn't quite seem to have a voice of its own. You read a McKillip or a de Lint or, yes, a Tolkien or a Kay…any of the time-tested who choose to walk through portions of Faërie…and you know whose book you're holding. Danley doesn't quite have that, yet. It's not that she doesn't have it within her. There were moments, particularly when the main character is recollecting his wife, where I thought, "There's Danley's voice!" I'd like to see more of that. I think it can happen. It's why I'll buy her next book.

[ansate · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A gloriously weird amalgam of fairy tale bits. Feels a little like something by Sheri S. Tepper.