One of the best anthologies I've read all year! If you are a lover of all things Baba Yaga - this witchy and dark themed collection of stories from various authors is definitely worth your time!

Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga.

This is a book of 22 short stories and one poem all about Baba Yaga. All of the stories are written by women. Each story is a rendition of who the author thinks Baba Yaga is and tells her story.

Many of the stories are dark and elegant. They depict Baba Yaga as evil with good intentions or a woman scorned by humanity. There is sadness and happiness in these short stories.

I have no favorites of these. They all touched my heart in one way or another. I will be getting a copy of this book to have in my personal library once it is released. I also think this would make a great gift for any of our witchy friends and family. Especially if they love the story of Baba Yaga.

Thank you #NetGalley and #BlackSpotBooks for letting me read and review #IntotheForest.

[Review Tk]
A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by the Baba Yaga. Featuring Gwendolyn Kiste, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Mercedes M. Yardley, Monique Snyman, Donna Lynch, Lisa Quigley, and R. J. Joseph, with a foreword by Christina Henry. Deep in the dark forest, in a cottage that spins on birds’ legs behind a fence topped with human skulls, lives the baba yaga. A guardian of the water of life, she lives with her sisters and takes to the skies in a giant mortar and pestle, creating tempests as she goes. Those who come across the baba yaga may find help, or hinderance, or horror. She is wild, she is woman, she is witch—and these are her tales.

A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by the Baba Yaga. Featuring Gwendolyn Kiste, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Mercedes M. Yardley, Monique Snyman, Donna Lynch, Lisa Quigley, and R. J. Joseph, with a foreword by Christina Henry. Deep in the dark forest, in a cottage that spins on birds’ legs behind a fence topped with human skulls, lives the baba yaga. A guardian of the water of life, she lives with her sisters and takes to the skies in a giant mortar and pestle, creating tempests as she goes. Those who come across the baba yaga may find help, or hinderance, or horror. She is wild, she is woman, she is witch—and these are her tales.

"Into the Forest" is a collection of short stories primarily in the horror genre, all written by women. It explores the various legends of the folklore of BABA YAGA. Some of the short stories were really good, and some fell flat. The sheer variety and interpretations of the legend blew my mind. The anthology was consistent in its delivery of the tone and its a sure recommendation from my part. Overall, it was a great experience and the collections of authors were amazing!

Thanks for providing me this free e-arc.

DNF

The concept of having tiny bits of stories about Baba Yaga is so interesting and even the dedication was awesome however I found most of the ones I read extremely boring and it pushed me into a pitless reading slump so I decided not to finish this book. However, there are a few stories I loved so I decided to give it a rating anyways. (Normally I do not give ratings to my DNFed books)

Wormwood by Lindz McLeod and Mama Yaga by Christina Sng are my favs till the point I read.

Into the Forest is an anthology edited by Lindy Ryan that is all about the legend of Baba Yaga. All the short stories were written by women authors, which was one of my main reasons for requesting the arc of it.

Much like any short story collection, some of the stories in here were great and some were not. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to sample some female horror authors and see who had a writing style that really worked for me. The results were inconclusive as some of these stories just didn’t have a lot to them. It is hard to decide if you like an author based on a three page short story. Also, a lot of the stories in here felt very repetitive. It makes sense since everyone was writing about the same character. I would have preferred ten really different, 20-30 pages stories instead of this where there are a ton of stories but some of them are very, very short.

I did like how dark some of these stories went. I would check trigger warnings before picking this up if you have any sensitivity towards gore, death of a child, or abuse. For me, those stories really felt like the Baba Yaga that I have read about in the past. These are a few stories that seemed a bit more uplifting and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s not what I was looking for in a Baba Yaga tale.

I think this would be fun for anyone who just wants a quick, mostly creepy short story collection. Personally, I would just have preferred the stories to be a bit longer.

This wonderful anthology breaths life into the folkloric tradition of Baba Yaga. As someone who grew up reading stories of Baba Yaga, I was excited to read this anthology. It did not disappoint! It was interesting to read the various takes on Baba Yaga in this compilation. Just as in the traditional folklore, she can be different things to different people. There are darker stories involving Baba Yaga as the trickster and child-eater, but then there are also the stories of her being a helper and fierce ally for women.

I strongly recommend this anthology, especially if you’re someone who has read Baba Yaga folklore in the past.

As with most short stories, I definitely felt like some parts of this collection were better than others, while some...I didn't really see the point of.
However, I think all of these writers did a wonderful job of writing the forest into these pages and their stories. Even in stories that I didn't fully enjoy, I appreciated the atmospheric settings.

I also appreciated that all of the authors seemed to very much respect the intangible nature of Baba Yaga and I felt this also shone through in their stories. They didn't try to pin her down or explain who exactly she was, and yet they still all wrote something unique about different aspects of the legendary tale.

I felt this collection also looked at themes of ''ugliness''/disfigurement equalling villainy, and therefore beauty equalling goodness. A really relevant topic in the realms of fairy tales and their retellings.

Some stand outs for me personally in this collection were; Dinner Plans With Baba Yaga: A poem by Stephanie M. Wytovich, The Story of a House by Yi Izzy Yu, Wormwood by Lindz McLeod and Shadow and Branch, Ghost Fruit Among the Lullabies by Saba Syed Razvi.

***Trigger Warning ***
I do want to insert a trigger warning here, however. There is a very graphic and brutal scene of abortion in one of the short stories (Stork Bites' by EV Knight. Which I just think is something to be aware of going into this book. if you are in any way sensitive to the topic or to gore.

This collection of Baba Yaga stories ranges from super creepy to nauseating to empowering to oddly sweet. Easy to read in small portions.

Like most anthologies, some of these were a hit for me and some of them a miss. That said, as a whole, the spooky forest, feminist horror was very well preserved across the board.
Highly recommend for fans not only of women in horror and Baba Yaga folk tales but also for fans of Hellbender and Gretel and Hansel.

(2.5)

Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga is an anthology collection of stories about The Baba Yaga.

I went into this hoping for a lot of interesting and unique interpretations of the Baba Yaga, and while some were definitely unique a lot of them just ended up feeling exactly the same. Most of the stories followed a very similar storyline, and while I understand why, it wasn't what I was looking for. To me most of the stories didn't add much to the actual myths about the Baba Yaga. So unfortunately this was a bit of a disappointment.

My personal favourite in this anthology is Birds of a Feather by Monique Snyman

I have never heard of Baba Yaga and was very intrigued by her. A witch who lives in the forest in a cottage made with chicken legs under the cottage- sign me up!! She also has a long and crooked nose, with a fence around the house made of bones, and is a cannibal.

There are 23 stories in this book, all written by women authors. Some I really enjoyed and will be reading again. But there were some that were so disturbing, they left a bad taste in my mouth and won’t get out of my head. I did feel like this many stories was way too many to read- it could have been cut in half. But every single story was completely different and unique.

My favorite stories are:
* Last Tour Into the Hungering Moonlight by Gwendolyn Kiste (yes, the same Gwendolyn who wrote The Rust Maidens).
* Herald the Knight by Mercedes Yardley
* Fair Trade by Jacqueline West

My least favorite that was so disturbing that I had to skim through was:
* Stork Bites by EV Knight

To female writers!
I learned a lot about this fairy tale and had fun with it. Thanks to Net Galley for a free copy of this ebook

I went into this book with a minimal understanding of Baba Yaga and the stories/myths around her. As having said that as I was reading this anthology that lack of knowledge was not hindering in any way, this collection of works is inclusive towards new visitors.

I loved that this collection was a huge fall into the Baba Yaga’s character and it was thought provoking. Baba Yaga certainly has planted her hut in my head to stay, she is a character that is memorable and enigmatic. I know that when this is finally released this year I will be rushing to the store to buy it.

I had wanted to pace myself, read bit by bit, but wow- I devoured this book. Each short story was captivating and enchanting. The way each writer brought Baba Yaga to life is an experience in of itself.

This was a risky book for me to get since I don't normally read horror, and I'd never heard of baba yaga. But there's a lot of talent here. I didn't like all of the stories, but that's normal for an anthology.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

I love Baba Yaga and this collection was amazing. I highly suggest this to anyone who likes Baba Yaga folklore

Fantasy; When I was a child my mother would always read me the story of Baba Yaga. It used to come in the Jack and Jill magazine. I absolutely loved it When I saw this I knew I had to read it. It was wonderful as expected. Highly recommend to anyone who likes fairytales. Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for allowing me to read this

It's really kind of a shame that this collection is full of very similar, mostly boring stories. Baba Yaga is a great folklore figure, but I didn't find anything new or interesting in these stories, just a lot of takes from the POV of BY and her acolytes as "from the villain/yes children are tasty" perspective. Couldn't anyone do any better? (See my review of Thistlefoot, a Baba Yaga story that blows these away.)

Thank you to Netgally and the publisher for the ARC..

I'm a real sucker for tales of Baba Yaga, so this collection really scratched every itch.
The collection has both retellings of the original lore, some poems and completely new takes on the Baba Yaga tales. Some better than others.

It's intereseting to see the different takes the authors have on the witch in the house with the chicken legs. She could be young and a healer in one, and a old crone that eats children in the next, but it feels like they captured the essence wonderfully.

This book was fabulous. Every story was great. A good collection of authors! I love the Legend of Baba Yaga and to read all these different versions brought me so much joy. She's my favorite mythical witch. I will definitely be buying this book.

3.5 stars

This is a collection of short stories about Baba Yaga. I requested this because I wanted to learn about Baba Yaga, because I know very little about her.

Like often the case with collections of stories, some I really liked and some really didn't work for me. The book started with a poem, and while it didn't particularly work for me, I liked the idea of having stories and poems in this book. It was the only poem in the book.

The stories all depict different images of Baba Yaga. There's not one Baba Yaga, but instead many different ones, with some similar qualities and some very different ones. Some stories are set in a modern time, with cell phones and cars and others are not. This is not always made explicitly clear, so you kinda have to guess from the story.

I read these stories on my lunch break, which is not something I would recommend. There's a lot of <b>cannibalism</b> in these stories. Some are more gory than others, though I don't think any of them are actually scary/horror.

There are two common types of Baba Yaga in this book. The most common is Baba Yaga, the witch in the woods who helps the abused women <s>and probably eats their husband</s>. A lot of stories have this feminist/empowering theme, with a bunch of truly terrible men. These stories are generally really well written too, but sometimes go a bit too far in the women = victim, men = bad.

Our second type is the trickster Baba Yaga. She tricks the people she meets into doing what she wants them to/ "helps" the people in a way that's ultimately self-serving and destroys the people she "helps." There are also a few stories with her being evil just because.

While these are the most common, not all stories fall into these categories. We have a retelling of Hansel and Gretel which I felt worked very well with the mythos of Baba Yaga. Then there are stories that felt mostly atmospheric, in the sense that not all that much happened, and they consisted mostly of descriptions. These were my least favourite stories. Lastly, there were stories that focused mainly on her house, and in particular it's chicken leg. They were very hit or miss for me.

Like often with story collections some stories are better written than others. The pacing, storytelling, character development varies greatly, and because all stories are very short, actual character development is often (but not always) missing. Some days the stories I read were great and I felt like they were solid 5 stars. Some days I was unlucky and they didn't work for me at all. For a long time I was pretty sure I was going to rate this book 4 stars, but as it happened, the final few stories fell really flat, so I decided to bring it down to a 3,5. Still this collection has some amazing stories in it and I definitely recommend it to people who want to learn about Baba Yaga, though be warned there's a lot of cannibalism, which isn't always easy to stomach.