I greatly enjoyed Inheritance of Scars, a debut novel by Crystal Seitz that’s officially being released on Oct. 1. It’s labeled dark fantasy by the publisher, and it certainly includes peril, difficult choices, and dark history and consequences from the past, but I found the ending very satisfying, and the journey there was interesting and well written.
The protagonist is Astrid, a teen who lost her mother in infancy and whose father took her away from the village she grew up in, mostly raised by her grandmother, nine years ago, never really explaining why. Her adolescence has been gravely complicated by Crohn’s disease, so she’s made few friends in Stockholm since then. When her grandmother goes missing and is declared dead, her father grudgingly agrees to take Astrid back for the memorial service.
Astrid finds evidence that her grandmother, Amma, didn’t just wander off, but took a trip into the forest – and left instructions for Astrid to join her. When Astrid, desperate for reunion, tries to follow these instructions, she soon finds out that all those Norse folk tales Amma used to tell her were actually warnings about real monsters. There are very good reasons that nobody from the village ever goes beyond a certain point into the forest, the weird dreams she’s having are some kind of ancestral visions, and there’s a destiny that Astrid, the descendant of the foremother of the village, is expected to fulfill. As she is repeatedly told, “The blood oath must not be broken.”
A lot of this book is about making choices and figuring out who to trust. Astrid’s distrust of her father’s motivations is reasonable, given his years of silence, but she continually wonders about the motivations of a traveling companion who joins in her quest. She also distrusts certain feelings that begin stirring within herself, since she’s unsure whether those feelings are really entirely hers. And when she finds out about her family legacy, and hears about her duty to follow it, she hates it but feels she has little choice. There were numerous times I felt she was making the wrong choices, but could understand why she made them. That made it all the better when she finally saw that she was being presented with some false and unacceptable choices, realized she had other options, and became an active agent rather than a reactor to events or a passive vessel.
Plot threads early in the novel are woven through and come back to the forefront in exciting ways. Astrid can’t save everyone, and some losses are profound, but some unexpected allies arise; so their actions together have big impacts not only on the present but transforming some of the past.
The excellent writing skills displayed by Seitz also strongly contributed to my enjoyment of this book. The word-pictures she paints of Astrid’s childhood memories and the forest journey are immersive, the creatures encountered along the way are creepily described and often quite chilling, and conversations feel convincing.
This is a really good debut novel. I will certainly keep it in mind as a possible Lodestar nominee, and Seitz as a possible Astounding nominee (since a quick search doesn’t reveal any previously published short fiction, etc., by Seitz) when awards season comes around.
Content Warnings: Death, blood, battle, body horror, familial losses, sacrifices, murders, betrayals, manipulations, lies, and misunderstandings
Comps: Vaesen RPG; The Twisted Ones, by T. Kingfisher; and a couple of folk horror movies that are too spoilery to name here, but ping me on the Skiffy and Fanty Discord!
Disclaimers: Publisher supplied free eARC for review
