The Wicker King by K. Ancrum

When August learns that his best friend, Jack, shows signs of degenerative hallucinatory disorder, he is determined to help Jack cope. Jack’s vivid and long-term visions take the form of an elaborate fantasy world layered over our own—a world ruled by the Wicker King. As Jack leads them on a quest to fulfill a dark prophecy in this alternate world, even August begins to question what is real or not.

August and Jack struggle to keep afloat as they teeter between fantasy and their own emotions. In the end, each must choose his own truth.

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I loved The Wicker King for being dark, twisty, and creative. While I adore trope-based books too, the feeling of being surprised and refreshed by a hook is tough to beat. Overall, I appreciated a lot of the weird choices, although the psychological nature of the narrative meant that the plot got narrow and internal. It’s intense, and short chapters keep it quick — fragments and snapshots that contribute to a chaotic feeling. There’s a lot else I would have liked to see, but I’m still thinking about it three weeks out, so it was clearly impactful.

FORMATTING

I read this as an eBook so can’t speak to the intention of the print run, but apparently the formatting of the hardcover and paperback contribute to the unsettling darkening of The Wicker King.

The multimedia format didn’t do all that much for me, admittedly. It was appealing, yes, but wasn’t intrinsically necessary to the book. I didn’t mind that it was included, but it was superfluous. When multimedia is used, I usually expect it to give us a wealth of information that we wouldn’t get otherwise from the narrative. There were times when it felt valuable, but for the most part, it was just a little bonus.

CHARACTERS

The plot focused on a friends-to-lovers slow burn, in which August is concerned about his best friend, Jack, who’s started to see things that aren’t there. Both are odd and lonely, which means that they almost solely rely on each other.

Co-dependency as a device likely draws me because of my identity as a twin (just psychoanalyzing here) but I love the I’ll-die-for-you friendship presented in this, and was reminded of my adoration of A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro, which relies on these same tenets of unshakeable loyalty.

August and Jack kind of blended together for me, but that’s partly the point. August was darker and stormier, the caretaker as Jack succumbed to his delusions. He also dealt drugs on the side and dealt with a mother in the throes of a depression. Jack, meanwhile, was the golden football boy with a girlfriend — who gets dumped partway through, and is never really addressed — suffering from his newfound hallucinations. I liked them both and found them to be complex, but as I said, not inherently distinct from each other.

Apparently, The Wicker King gets flack for being queer-baiting (which I believe to be false.) The author responded to this criticism in her Goodreads commentary, and I knew that going into my read. So I was surprised when I actually did overtly see a romance between the pages, but I tend to prefer subtler romances anyways — when that line between “friendship” and “relationship” changes, but you can’t quite pinpoint whether it’s a good idea. The Wicker King was undoubtedly, by my read, the story of two boys in love with each other, who also happened to be best friends.

I have a lot of thoughts about how much of this book centers around parental neglect. I appreciate that their stories are told, and that thematically, it all tied together; however, sometimes blaming everything on parental neglect felt like a cop-out for not fully finishing out a storyline (more on that below.) I felt very sorry for each of the boys but did feel like, as thematically relevant as it was, the author still should have given some closure to certain story threads.

PACING & PLOTTING

The story was immediate. Here and now. There wasn’t much thought given to the future, because the present had so many demands. This quality imbued The Wicker King with such urgency that I flew through the book. Unfortunately, it also meant certain storylines just dropped off.

Important ones too, that raised questions later in the book about parents and logistics and the state of the world. I ultimately decided that this could have been stylistic choice. As we continue through the book, the perspective narrows, focusing much more distinctly on the mental states of our two main characters. It’s written in third person limited, so that narrowing in of worldview could mimic the observations of the main character, consumed only by what’s in front of him.

Still, I wished slightly for a more cohesive, big-picture glance with which to orient myself in the context of how these encounters, and this plot, would influence those involved later on. In the context of the author’s note — focusing on the harrowing emotional impact of neglect — I was ultimately okay with that choice but do feel the need to warn readers who might need a little more closure.

This dropping of plot threads is better if you slightly suspend reality. Since you’re already forced to do so to embed yourself in the plot — speculative, psychological, horror elements — that demand might be too much for the casual reader. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t believe in all the things the author wants you to.

The plot is very momentary. Each scene is a fragment in time, as the world gets more chaotic and overwhelming around each of the two characters. Quite literally, the other characters didn’t seem to matter except to be haunting little specters flitting at the edges of our protagonists’ vision. If not for a major plot choice at the end that isolated the two main characters, we may have gotten more of a feel for the others being three-dimensional. Still, they were all interesting and colorful.

OVERALL

I love moody books. My general book taste, with fiction, can usually be summarized by “anything you’d read around Halloween.” Considering that’s the date of this book’s release, it’s definitely positioned to be a dark, haunting narrative that draws on complex character dynamics for a harrowing and emotionally resonant feel. As I mentioned, this book has stayed with me several weeks out and has extremely specific texture that makes it feel fundamentally different from anything out there. Short, vignette-style chapters contribute to the cinematic nature, making each scene like a fleeting image that leaves an atmospheric residue behind.

The layered fantasy world was engaging (and in this case, actually benefited from having plot holes and unanswered questions) although I could get frustrated with the cavalier treatment of subplots by the end. I still had questions and concerns, but the thematic power of the story overwhelmed those, and made me think it lingering was a tribute to its importance.

I loved it; I can see it being polarizing to readers, and I hope that if you have the same taste I do, you’ll appreciate its narrative and poetic qualities while being able to discard its relatively few flaws. It’s a quick read overall, so worth checking out. Gritty yet striking, with a romanticization that appeals to my style. I love any book that I remember so vividly after reading, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

For fans of:

Frost by Marianna Baer; The Dark Beneath the Ice by Amelinda Bérubé; The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson; The Call by Peader Ó Guilín; Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson; folk horror; psychological thrillers.