After being magically kidnapped to work for a day and a night for an evil wizard, Jenia travels on foot to find and stop him. When she comes across a village and tells her story she is not believed until one of their own is also taken. But who is the wizard, will she stop him and who might help?

The Tower in the Crooked Wood is very slow to get started, so slow it almost became a 'did not read', but I persevered and was relieved when it eventually started to pick up. Although, even then I found it a little slow for my taste.

Jenia is a very well-developed character, making it easy for me to understand her motives, and her anger against the villagers and others. I was able to feel her emotions and was emotionally with her throughout.

The scenery was also well written, enabling me to get a good feel for the territory, and feel the fear the villages had toward the bog. That is definitely not a place I'd like to visit.

Overall, after a slow start, I did enjoy the story and feel any one would find something good about the book. Enjoy. ( )

Jenia has traveled through woods with evil creatures to come to stay with a group of gentle people. She tells them her story of being taken at night and a day to work the stone to build an evil wizard's tower. He has corrupted the land and the trees on the island where the tower stands. Jenia has been made a prisoner by Krummolz several times and now she wants revenge since he killed her sister's baby and her brother.

The gentle people advise against it until one of their own is taken. Will Jenia destroy the wizard before he destroys her and her world?

The book was slow to get me hooked and I had a bit of a time following the story line. But once I got into the story, it got better. I was able to feel Jenia's moods--the loss of her brother and sister's child, and then the frustration with the group of people she was staying with. All in all, it was a good book.

I won this book in a LibraryThing giveaway. ( )

I enjoyed this book a fair bit, though it felt a bit short. It almost seems like there are parts of the story that are told at an expected pace, and others (either through flashbacks, or just a quick summary) that could be stretched out a lot more. This probably could have been three times as long.
The characters weren't overly fleshed out - the focus was primarily on the protagonist, who I felt was captured nicely. I appreciated that once in a while we were given a snarky stray thought that crossed her mind which she did not say. Most of the other characters felt a bit like they were there to serve their purpose, though they had unique voices and personalities. I would have liked to have more of their stories.
The plot was straightforward, and resolved in an expected manner - again, I would have enjoyed more of this. A bit more world building, a bit more difficulty with the climax.
Overall, I enjoyed the story, and simply would like a bit more of it to feel like there was weight to it. I probably wouldn't be this fussy if the premise wasn't something that had captured me.

The subtitle of this book is "A Novel", which it clearly isn't, and many of its faults can be attributed to its short length. The author cobbles together too many disparate elements without enough build-up to influence us to accept them at face value. Set on an island in the Northwest of North America with an appropriate aboriginal culture, the story centers upon a girl who stumbles into a village, tells a strange story of involuntary servitude by magic and states her certainty that the perpetrator of this crime is on this very island and she has come to find it. As she tells her story, we learn of the loss of her brother and of her sister's baby as a result. Jenna's tale of her journey here involves her also involuntary service to a ruler of a walled city, and her escape. This sets up the circumstance of the ruler's soldiers following after her to bring her back. The village people refuse to let them have Jenna by force. Here the story stagnates until Jenna once again is brought to the magician to labor on his tower.

The relationships do not have time to develop, there is a lot of down time that doesn't move the story along, and we never find out why it all happens. There are hints of a larger framework but it never appears. This might have made a good short story, well-pruned, but it's a bloated novella and a severely-truncated novel, despite a few good elements. ( )

It took my a while to warm up to this book. It was poorly written but the storyline was very interesting. I thought the book was the first publication of a new author until I read the author bio at the end. Jenia is the main character and making her an arborist is a fresh choice. I had difficulty connecting with any of the characters. Even when Jenia spoke of her anger and grief over what the wizard did to her,her brother and sister, you never really felt it. You understood why she was going after him but never really felt the depth of emotions. I also had a hard time with the idea that the Lord she took temporary work with, wanted her arborist skills so badly he sent soldiers after her. Apparently the soldiers had no orders on how far to take this mission. They saved her life in the bog and then drowned going after her at high tide in their armor. The story ends after the wizard, Krumholtz, is defeated but even that was not very satisfying. All those misplaced people, still misplaced and possibly never getting home. None of the questions that arose were answered. The wizard, his history, and why he was at the island were still a complete mystery. ( )