'Left all alone after her mother passes away, twelve-year-old Louisa LaRoche watches the sky for her father. Long ago, a powerful gust of wind swept through town, stealing him away on the wings of his untamed magic—the same magic that stirs within Louisa. As if she is made of hollow bones and too much air, her feet never quite touch the ground.
'But for all her sky gazing, Louisa finds her fortune on the leaf-strewn street when she spots a gleaming black-and-gold invitation—a ticket to the Carnival Beneath the Stars. If her father fits in nowhere else, maybe she’ll find him there, dazzling crowds alongside the other strange and wonderful feats. Only, soon after she arrives, a tightrope act ends disastrously—and suspiciously. As fate tugs Louisa closer to the stars, she must decide if she’s willing to slip into the injured performer’s role, despite the darkness plucking at the carnival’s magical threads.'
The Forest of Stars is the new middle-grade novel from Titan Books that feels dark and creepy, yet is packed with magic and love as a young girl sets out into the world to search for her father.
The story centres on Louisa LaRoche, a girl who's always been special. For as long as she can remember Louisa has been unable to touch the ground. Floating above the floor, never able to set her feet on the ground, Louisa has kept her ability hidden from the outside world through fear that she will be rejected, seen as a devil child.
Having always been cared for and protected by her mother, Louisa's life is thrown upside down when her mother passes away, leaving Louisa alone in a dark and frightening city covered in ash. With next to nothing to her name Louisa takes to begging on the streets for any coin that she can get, but when instead of money she finds a golden ticket, one for the Carnival Beneath the Stars she begins to form a plan. Having been told how her father was just like her, and how he was swept away by the wind one day she comes to the conclusion that a carnival of wonders might be the perfect place to start looking for her father.
Setting out for the carnival Louisa discovers a world of magic and wonders that she never dreamed could exist. Not only does she learn that her abilities come from magic, but that there are others in the world like her; people with amazing abilities. With a vast and potentially dangerous world open before her Louisa has to choose whether to continue on her search on her own, or whether to join the carnival where her new friends live, hoping to one day find her father among the crowds.
Louisa makes for an interesting protagonist, as apart from a few small pieces of information that she has at the beginning of the story she's pretty unaware of the world outside of her home with her mother, and it allows the readers to discover a lot of this strange, magical place alongside her. She has no idea how she has the ability to float, she doesn't know that there are other people like her in the world, and she often finds herself trying to catch up on these amazing revelations at the same time as us.
Along Louisa's journey she begins to discover that not only do other people have strange abilities, but that they're all vastly different. The people at the carnival use their powers to put on shows for people who would otherwise hate and fear them, and have come to for a tight knit family. Whilst Louisa is very much a girl who's never had to rely on anyone but her mother, and has never really had any friends before, it's this sense of kindness and companionship that draws her to the carnival more so than her pursuit to find her father; and we discover that Louisa is actually quite a lonely girl. She doesn't really know how to interact with people, how to open up to others and make friends, and getting to see her come out of her shell and do so is one of the highlights of the book.
Her friends make for an interesting bunch, some with magical abilities, some without, but all of them connected together through the carnival. As such, when something begins to threaten the carnival, and those who live there, Louisa begins to find her new life slipping away from her. I loved this aspect of the book, that it was her desire to help and protect her new family, rather than some special status as some kind of 'chosen one' that set her out to do heroic things and try to solve a dangerous mystery. It gave her more agency as a person, and it's nice to see a children's book where the people putting themselves in danger are doing it simply because they feel like it's the right thing to do.
Aside from the interesting characters Heather Kassner also manages to craft an interesting world, albeit one we don't learn much about. We get small hints at what the world is like, from the ash covered city that Louisa grew up in, to the spooky forest the carnival travels to, to the towns and cities beyond. There's a sense that this is a large place, one with varying types of people and mysteries to be discovered, even if we spend the majority of our time within the walls of the carnival itself.
Despite not learning a huge amount we get a decent sense of the world that Louisa inhabits, and this really infuses the feel of the book. The story feels mystical and Gothic, and whilst I personally don't like his films it instantly brings to mind the works of Tim Burton, and the way that he's able to make something dark and spooky that borders on scary, yet feels right at home as a children's tale. It's like The Addams Family mixed in with The Greatest Showman, even though it feels like neither of those things and something completely it's own and unique to itself.
The Forest of Stars is a book that feels closer to a fairy-tale than anything else, a story with love and family at it's centre, but with a lot of darkness mixed in too. The book is suffused with dark, almost Gothic tones that make the wonders of the Carnival Under The Stars feel slightly dreamlike and almost nightmarish at times. Despite this, it never goes into the realm of horror, and I can see it drawing in readers of all ages.
My only real criticism of the the book is that I wanted more. I wanted to spend more time with Louisa. I wanted to get to know her new friends more. I wanted to see more of the inhabitants of the carnival and get to know some of them. I wanted to see more of the world. I'm hoping that this won't be the last of these characters, that we'll get more of these characters and the carnival in the future. If not, it's still a wonderful, imaginative book, and one that I had a huge amount of fun reading.
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