Stay Out of the Forest

[fineplan]

Having just finished Premee Mohamed's The Butcher of the Forest, I'm overthinking how love of horror works. The People in the forest aren't ever named fairy or fae or whatever, but this definitely fits into fae horror/dark fantasy. So as I was trying to come up with a review I realized that fae horror is one of my favorite subgenres and then I started to think about where the conflicts come in those kinds of stories... And its essentially, it's all about not being to trust any of your senses and you can't trust anything anyone says to mean what you think it does. In fact, you can't even trust your OWN words to mean what you think they do. And even though you can't trust what you perceive, you've got to be on high alert at all time trying to spot hints to prove the thing you know is an illusion really IS an illusion because... well, what if it ISN'T this time and it's exactly what you need? Like, isn't that the most anxious of circumstances? In some ways even more scary than the fact they could magic you into some incomprehensible thing... because you can't quite understand that part anyway. 

But then, isn't that also just like real life most of the time? Even the people who aren't playing games have all kinds of hidden messages and are so ready to look for nonexistent messages in everything you say... So, do I like far horror because those beings are creepy as heck if they aren't your fairy godmother or do I enjoy it because I have some level of social anxiety/confusion? :P