When myth becomes nightmare … The price of blood is always blood. Natalia’s in trouble. She only looked away for a second, and now her brother’s hurt. Her relationship with her mother is fractured, her brother’s condition is deteriorating, and her only hope lays deep in the unforgiving forest. A secret spoken only in whispers offers a way out. But when help comes in occult forms a sacrifice may … sacrifice may be the only way to restore the balance.
Humanity and nature collide in The Balance by Kev Harrison, a modern reimagining of the Slavic folk tale of Baba Yaga, set in Cold War Poland.
more
We follow Natalia, a sixteen-year-old girl who’s failure to watch her brother playing results in him breaking his leg. The town doctor does what he can but without proper supplies, he’ll likely have to amputate the soon infected leg. But Natalia knows stories of a witch that lives in the woods and she takes her brother to her…
While this does work out and the boy’s leg is healed Natalia’s very religious mother figures this out and turns her in which leads to the wrath of the Church and the obvious results afterward…
From there Natalia must deal with a tough decision while the town comes under attack by nature leading to many gory and great scenes. These were well detailed and the highlight of the story for me.
The plot moves rather quickly and nothing was dragged out. Although I found it to be mostly too straightforward with little surprises and would have liked there to have been more to shake it up.
The writing really brings the little town and surrounding forest to life. I have to admit though that I honestly would have never known it was set in the Cold War era if the book description didn’t tell me so. I mean it was obvious it wasn’t modern times but still.
It really commits to and explores its themes and was well thought out. Definitely worth the read.
This is a cracking short, Harrison is on a roll at the moment, his folk horror base has really found some love in the horror community, and this retelling/reimagining of the Baba Yaga folktale really lands – I breezed through this in an afternoon and was hungry for more! Luckily, Kev’s “Below” is releasing (Today!) so even if it’s less folk orientated, I have a Harrison-voiced novel to look forward to.
The Balance is centered on new Christianity fighting against the old religions, if they can be called that, even – basically a witch hunt. Kev hits home right from the first page with some teeth-grinding body horror and makes you watch as The MC’S brother’s broken bone is reset with only basic equipment and painkillers. Lovely. It ramps up the tension to the max, and then Kev adds emotional pressure in the form of guilt for the MC (Natalia). That tension is maintained by the brutal murder of a woman in the forest, who had helped the brother with a cure for the infected wound, her good deed taken as witchcraft. A re-imagining of the Baba Yaga personality. No chicken legs here.
I don’t want to go into the ending, there is a great twist I really should have seen coming (Kev masterfully playing my biases against me in assumptions about a core detail of Baba Yaga) which landed well, and the whole reason the novel is called “The Balance” is also well explained, again, spoilers would be required to explain that, so I’ll not go there.
Instead, I’ll just say that the world-building was fantastic, I was fully immersed in the world Kev created, it was a perfect mix of folklore and modern storytelling.
This gets 5 ‘s, the most impressive Harrison story to date (in my admittedly limited experience). Can’t wait to descend BELOW.
Kev Harrison has quickly gone from a writer I haven’t yet read, to a must-read author. Through his short fiction and Demain Publishing releases, Harrison has cemented his spot with me, for engaging, enjoyable short fiction/novella length reads.
With ‘The Balance’ I was intrigued from day one, yet as is typical lately, it took me some time to finally get around to having it at the top of my TBR.
I knew a bit about it going in, more-so the Baba Yaga mythology aspect, but I was keen to see his take on it, especially as I’d heard it was set in Poland near a place he lived for a few years.
What I liked: The story is incredibly straight forward. Siblings Kuba and Natalia live with their mother in a small town. One day, Kuba falls and breaks his leg. The local doctor tries to prevent an infection happening from the avulsion fracture, but it’s no use. They don’t have the required antibiotics to prevent amputation. So, Natalia secrets Kuba to the mysterious old woman on the outskirts of town, thus causing a ripple effect within the village.
Harrison has crafted a fantastic, quick read, that walks the line between fantasy and dark fiction. The familiar fairy tale aspect of it being a single-parent household, and the battle between Church and Nature was really well done and the book seemed to have a quality all on its own that pulled you along and made you have to read it.
Natalia was a really well-done character. One that the reader sympathizes with immediately and feels her struggle as she goes through her options. Her story arc was spot on.
What I didn’t like: For a book that was so compulsive to read and so engaging, I’m struggling to think of any moment within that made me uneasy or had a sense of dread. Maybe that’s because of my personal familiarity with Baba Yaga and expecting the story to play out as it did? Especially as early on Baba Yaga explains her role and what she is responsible for? Hard to pinpoint really.
Why you should buy this: This book was fantastic. Even without me finding it chilling or unnerving, I absolutely had to know what happened and couldn’t stop reading it. Harrison commands the characters and while the details were scarce, the village itself becomes a necessary plot element throughout.
Great stuff.