"I am the lure inside your mind;
your vow until you break me.
Through boughs of hate and hearts resigned,
forever in darkness, shall you take me."
The Astral Wanderer and the Forest of Tears is the first book in the Astral Wanderer series by Amelie C. Langlois, a melting pot of Cosmic Horror, Dark Fantasy, and Apocalyptic Science Fiction. It follows a nameless, immortal wanderer who has forgotten everything but the existence of his daughter, and has dedicated his life to searching for her.
The antagonist of the story is the setting itself: a sentient forest that has consumed the entire world after the apocalypse, which slowly mutates and maddens everyone trapped within it, and grants them the ability to draw nourishment from devouring the souls of living beings.
The Astral Wanderer and the Forest of Tears contains examples of:
- After the End: The story takes place after an undefined apocalypse referred to as the Cataclysm, which triggered the growth of the forest. The only evidence of any previous civilization existing is the ruins, and those few immortals who can remember the old world.
- Apocalyptic Log: The logs recorded by BREACH and the Consortium of Night, describing their survival of the Cataclysm.
- Beneath the Earth: The waygates, and ruins of Nix.
- Blank Slate: The fate of the reincarnated, though it is unclear if this still occurs if the person’s soul is destroyed.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: It is strongly implied that the Wanderer is trapped inside a sentient story maintained by the Red Willow, the mind of the forest. This is confirmed in the Sister Verse books.
- Chekhov's Armoury: Details are frequently established in advance of becoming relevant, particularly the logs that appear within the main story, functioning as previews of events to come.
- The Chessmaster: Ithika has spent its entire existence within the universe conspiring to destroy it, so that it can feed off that destruction. This also applies to the forest itself.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: The Wanderer and Exoniga are both completely unfazed by death and brutality.
- The Conspiracy: Everything that happens is a scheme of either the Cryptic Hand, or the forest itself.
- The Corruption: The Swey, the omnipresent aura of the forest that mutates flesh and destroys memories. It heals and strengthens anyone who willingly opens themselves to it, but also slowly drives them insane.
- Cosmic Horror Story: The theme of the overall story. The Wanderer is completely out of his depth, and is incapable of comprehending the greater conflict that is unfolding around him.
- Cosmic Plaything: The Wanderer to Ithika, but this also applies to everyone, as every character is subject to the will of the forest.
- Crapsack World: The forest is completely awful, and has zero redeeming qualities.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: It’s hard to find examples of death that aren’t this, particularly when it comes to the victims of the forest.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Technically, every character, but the Wanderer and Exoniga win the prize.
- Death World: The forest is extremely hostile to all sentient life, and anyone outside of warded enclaves has a very short life expectancy. Even then, it’s not a guarantee, as many things can just ignore the wards entirely.
- Driven to Suicide: The fate of some of the bodies the Wanderer encounters in the forest. He also flirts with this throughout the story, but perseveres for the sake of his daughter.
- Dug Too Deep: The salt mines of Octavia, which were hiding the ruins of a waygate.
- Dystopia: Implied to have been the state of the world under the rule of the Crest.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Red Willow, the mind of the forest. Also Ithika, a sentient painting that feeds on destruction. Honorable mentions to the ascendants, particularly Riven.
- Eldritch Location: The forest, and by extension, the entire universe.
- Empty Shell: It is implied that Exoniga will eventually reduce her captive to this, in the Wanderer’s first flashback.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The Cataclysm, and Ithika’s goal.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: The trees of the forest will randomly try to eat anyone near them, most of the vegetation is poisonous, and certain vines will actively try to inject people with hallucinogenic venom. The cellular willows will also damage the souls of anyone in their proximity, and the forest itself is a constant barrage on its occupants’ psyche.
- Foreshadowing: Everywhere. Characters, settings, and events in the story are often briefly mentioned or alluded to in some way long before being formally introduced.
- Garden of Evil: The forest. The Glade also qualifies, with an atmosphere of liquid flesh, and being populated entirely by soul-devouring willows, bizarre spatial anomalies, and mind-shattering, omnipotent entities.
- Genius Loci: The forest is sentient, and manipulates the fates of everyone within it.
- Good is Not Nice: The Wanderer used to be a good person, but was never particularly friendly, and automatically distrusted everyone but his immediate family.
- Gorn: The violence is quick, brutal, and weird, and there are entire environments that are literally made out of mutilated flesh and bone.
- Heroic BSoD: The Wanderer’s reaction to his daughter’s fate, in regard to both her past, and what she has become.
- Humans Are Bastards: The Wanderer is extremely paranoid about everyone, and often for good reason. Almost every character is either evil, or has an ulterior motive.
- The Illuminati: The Cryptic Hand’s presence in Ishtar.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The Wanderer, in the past. He also mentions encountering vicious gangs of cannibals. At one point, he does clash with a small group of survivors, but they live off plants made of human flesh, as opposed to actual humans.
- Kansas City Shuffle: The conflict between Ithika and the Red Willow.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Wanderer, but its severity is due to several factors, least of which is the Swey. It is implied that Ithika may have played a role in brainwashing him, and damaged his memories in the process. He was also present at the epicenter of the Cataclysm at the end of the Sister Verse and the Throne of Void.
- Lost Technology: The Wanderer and most of the other survivors depend on scavenged technology left behind by the Crest, the dominant civilization before the darklings exterminated them all.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: The Wanderer’s connection to the Swey, but it’s slowly eroding his sanity in the process.
- Low Culture, High Tech: An inevitable consequence of having so much advanced technology left abandoned in ruins after the Cataclysm.
- Mind Rape: The forest does this to everyone, but it really, really likes the Wanderer.
- Mind Screw: The entire story, front to back.
- Misery Builds Character: The darklings temper flesh by exposing it to repeated trauma, which, under the power of the forest, renders it immune to all conventional weaponry. The Wanderer tries to fight a legionnaire under Nix, but fails spectacularly until Ithika intervenes.
- More than Mind Control: A major theme of the story. Almost every character is unknowingly serving the designs of a greater power.
- Muggles: The Wanderer encounters the occasional human who is mostly unchanged by the Swey, usually due to them being born more recently, or being a member of BREACH. Physically, they are at an extreme disadvantage in the forest.
- Mushroom Samba: The Wanderer is repeatedly poisoned or drugged by various things throughout the story. A more literal example occurs in Bastion, when he has to ingest a hallucinogenic mushroom in order to see Cleoval’s mark, because she doesn’t want anyone but him to know about the heroin stash.
- One World Order: What the Crest were trying to be.
- Precursors: The Crest were a cybernetic evolution of humanity, and were partially responsible for the creation of the Dreadlands, and its binding with the waygates.
- Properly Paranoid: The Wanderer, and for very good reason.
- Psychological Horror: The effects of the Swey upon the Wanderer, forcing him into vivid hallucinations, which are made real by the power of the forest.
- Rewatch Bonus: The story benefits from multiple reads, due to the sheer number of elements that are hinted at before being formally introduced.
- Scavenger World: The forest, and the Dreadlands before it.
- Shapeshifting: The avatar of the forest can assume any form it wants, as can its ascendants. Through this, it is implied that the Wanderer may or may not have actually been watching his daughter in his flashbacks. It’s entirely possible that the forest engineered the entire scenario.
- Shout-Out: Certain character names were combined from “The Colour Out of Space” and “The Shadow Out of Time”.
- Spider Limbs: A common mutation of the Swey.
- Spooky Painting: Ithika technically doesn't exist within the physical world, but has been bound to a painting by the power of the Red Willow.
- Surreal Horror: This cranks up to 10 at the very start, and never really lets up. Bastion is a very odd and unsettling introduction to the setting.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The entire story. The Wanderer is completely insane, and it only gets worse the more he exposes himself to the Swey.
- Time Abyss: All the cosmic entities, like Ithika and Bor-Geth.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Sister Verse is repeatedly referenced, but never by name.
- Training from Hell: The fate of the legionnaires, through their tempering of flesh.
- Trauma Conga Line: The Wanderer’s entire life, and by extension, Exoniga’s. Most of this is intentional, on the part of the forest, which manipulates fate in disastrous ways if one resorts to their intuition, so the Wanderer intentionally tries to focus on concrete facts and directions in order to avoid this.
- Uncertain Doom: The fate of Bastion.
- When Trees Attack: The regular trees of the forest will often try to trap and consume anyone near them.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Wanderer can heal himself and be strengthened by the Swey whenever he wants, but it erodes his identity every time he does it. It is implied that anyone who abuses this power is eventually hollowed out entirely, and becomes a mindless beast that feeds upon souls.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The Wanderer can’t actually see Ithika, whose appearance in the painting defies any concrete form due to not actually being a native physical entity. It is implied that its image was used to destroy the minds of seven people in Ishtar, so that they could be reprogrammed as psychic beacons.
