Having reached my tolerance limit with two back-to-back romance reviews, I now return to home territory: all things gnarly and body horror-related. This time, we are dealing with rotting limbs, forest cryptids, blood magic, the horrors of pursuing a PhD, and one of the slimiest, grossest fictional billionaires I have had the misfortune of discovering since Christian Grey–fun times ahead.
Rachel Kitch’s The Forest Bleeds (upcoming, October 2026), marketed as dark academia horror “inspired by Appalachian and Southeast Asian folklore”, is a twisted, claustrophobic, and occasionally deeply terrifying novel. It is also maybe one of the only fantasy/horror works I have read that truly deserves to use the dark academia tag. Not only does it extensively criticize the allure of ivory tower success at the cost of one’s ethical principles, but the main character and her fellow PhD students are isolated from the world for almost the entirety of the novel–their survival in this bleak situation heavily dependent upon their scientific research, their prior medical knowledge, and their laboratory skills. This is not a story that dubs itself “dark academia” based on vibes alone: for the most part, it doesn’t take place on a campus, and interestingly enough, is not particularly bothered with disciplines in humanities or fine arts. (Which I’m absolutely fine with; as an English PhD student myself, I can only handle so many stories about people losing their minds and committing murder after reading too much Edgar Allan Poe or Shakespeare.)
Instead, The Forest Bleeds looks upon the trickling of magic into modernity. In this version of the 21st century, “occult-enhanced” technology–blood/bodily magic, thaumaturgy, usage of magical compounds or poisons, et cetera–has been integrated into scientific and industrial development, particularly in the fields of biomedicine and pharmacology. Our protagonist, Saige Chambers, a bio-engineering scholar, is researching the potential benefits of applying blood magic to leukemia treatments, after having lost her mother to the same disease. But despite her aptitude for excellence, Saige is not quite content, or even sure, of her place in academia. For one thing, she is highly introverted, without many friends; for another, her OCD and anxiety makes it difficult for her to carry out her research without rigid schedules and numerous daily rituals–sudden disruptions to her routine tend to make her anxious or spiral. So, when the doctoral candidates in her department are invited to a prestigious conference, she is not quite as thrilled as her peers about this unexpected event.
And with good reason too; things get significantly worse. Because Saige and her peers never make it to the conference.
Instead, they are abducted off the highway, and brought to a remote mansion in the Appalachian Mountains. The owner of the mansion, billionaire and pharmaceutical company CEO Arius Medea, demands their assistance in healing his leg, which has been grotesquely infected and corrupted by some dark magic. He tasks Saige and her fellow witches to devise a cure within a week–or they shall pay for their failure with their lives. What follows is a high-stakes, immensely tense, collective spiralling into scientific frenzy, as all the scholars begin ransacking their brains to save their own lives through discipline-specific knowledge, each employing their unique magical abilities to heal Atrius. Over the coming days, people start to go missing, strange incidents occur in the woods around the mansion, and even as her cohort races against time to fulfill Arius’ demands, Saige finds herself secretly and dangerously drawn to her captor–especially after she discovers an unexpected past connection with him.
For myself, I had a (mostly) great time with The Forest Bleeds, mainly because of its emphasis upon body horror to criticize the exploitation of marginalized, vulnerable people–including immigrants, racialized people, low-income groups, disabled folks, and so on–by corporate groups and big pharmaceutical companies in modern America. Through Atrius’ actions and the legacy of his company Medeus Pharmaceuticals, the reader gets a glimpse into the many, *many* corruptions that fester within the industry: unethical medical experimentation, test subject abuse, exploitation of labour, deceptive research, and a staggering lack of accountability from the billionaires who profit off the lifeblood of the vulnerable. Body horror has always been a very effective medium for anti-capitalist commentary, and I think the novel does a great job of grounding the uncanny horror elements–especially the cryptids, oh yes!–in a story that can, at times, feel disarmingly realistic. The Appalachian setting, and the way Kitch draws from West Virginia’s history of labor strikes and mine workers’ movements as a backstory adds greater context to the themes of exploitation, systemic violence, and how profit has always outweighed any concern for human lives under American capitalism.
I found Saige to be a fascinating lead character: sympathetic, yet deeply frustrating at times. Throughout the novel, she constantly oscillates between her loyalty towards her friends, and her own desires for prestige and academic acclaim–desires which are immediately weaponized by Atrius, as he grooms her into becoming his perfect accomplice. Nothing about her actions is sugarcoated, or explained away by reductive identity politics. Also, Kitch skillfully handles one common issue I have with many dark academia novels: that most of these protagonists (even the marginalized ones) seem far too enamoured by the glamour of historically harmful institutions to ever actually properly criticize them. If you want a story that makes you viscerally uncomfortable about the predatory operations of power and corruption in academia and research fields, this book is it.
Race complicates things even further, as the exploitation metaphor is made more explicit by Atrius’ control and abuse of Saige. He is a white, wealthy capitalist, she is a disabled, racialized woman born to immigrants. To heal him by activating her magic upon his rotting flesh, she must literally and figuratively bleed, and we discover how the history of blood witches in America like Saige and her ancestors is linked to a colonial tradition built upon immigrant labor. I was gagging every time Atrius called her “pet”, the gross, creepy implications of it all! Additionally, two of Saige’s colleagues, poison witch Vaishnavi Sri (who is also the former’s longtime crush), and spirit witch Thuy Nguyen, are South Asian and South-East Asian women respectively. They are not present in the story just for shallow diversity purposes–thank goodness–as traditional medicine, spirituality, and cosmology absolutely do figure in their research and in the application of their magical abilities. At one point her peers even express concern that Saige is disconnected from her Thai heritage, as this cultural alienation deprives her of crucial inherited knowledge. Anyway, as noted, the repeated bodily and psychological harm Atrius inflicts upon women of color thus becomes indicative of a greater cultural, historical, and racial power imbalance within the context of the novel. (Note: this is also why I cannot give the book 5 stars, because its marketing seems to suggest a love triangle situation. I understand the appeal of Darklina-esque m/f pairings for certain readers, but it comes across a bit icky to provide trigger warnings for on-page assault, only to advertise the culprit as a romantic rival to the racialized lesbian character with whom Saige actually has a real relationship. Anyway.)
Ultimately, having read quite a few dark academia novels this year, I would say that this novel is one of the only works in this controversial sub-genre that I actually really enjoyed. I felt that it added something new to the conversation with its setting, its usage of STEM-related horror magic, and its meaningfully nuanced representation of race and class politics. If body horror is not your thing, tough luck with this book, because The Forest Bleeds concerns itself very deeply with body politics and the impact of violence etched upon marginalized identity, in more ways than one.
Please add The Forest Bleeds on your TBR on Goodreads and follow Rachel Kitch on Instagram (@rachkitchwrites).
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Content warnings: Body Horror, Gore and Injury, Graphic Violence, Death of Loved Ones (Off-page Parental Loss), Mentions of Cancer, OCD Behaviour (Intrusive Behavior), Medical Malpractice, Sexual Harassment, Grooming and Abusive Relationships, Sexual Assault (on-page, subtly written), Suicidal Ideation
