Witch Knell is the forest where sinners go to die, and the villagers gave it a second name, The Eating Woods, because what goes in does not come back out. Maevyth Bronwick knows better than to breach that misty labyrinth of trees. A tragic turn of events sends her past the archway of bones anyway, across a boundary no mortal has crossed, and twenty hours of audiobook follow her into what waits on the other side. Aethyria holds cursed souls, grotesque creatures, a magehood hunting her over an arcane prophecy, and a lord under a curse of his own, Zevander Rydainn, an assassin his prey calls The Scorpion, who would sooner throw his new ward to a pack of fyredrakes than keep her alive.
Zevander and Maevyth's Rules Cost Something to Break
The five-star response that opens by quoting the book itself picks the line that sells it best: he'd lived too long with the practicality of knowing the stars were too far out of reach, and yet, in his arms lay the brightest of them all. That same reader describes the prologue as a trap sprung before the story properly starts, and calls the magic system fresh, digestible, and unforgiving. Unforgiving is the load-bearing word in that list. Keri Lake has built a world with rules that cost something to break, and the plot is constructed so that breaking them is the only way forward.
What makes the combination work is that the gothic apparatus is not decoration draped over a romance. The prophecy, the banishment, the blood that proves to be the key to a curse: each of those is a plot mechanism with consequences that land on the page, and the attraction between the assassin and the woman he has been ordered to hide grows out of them rather than running alongside. The description promises something plot-heavy and atmospheric with a slow-burn romance and a touch of horror, which for once is an accurate inventory. The proportions favor plot, and the horror is closer to dread than to shock. The one structural risk in that design is the same thing that makes it satisfying: because so much depends on the rules, the early hours have to install them, and installation is rarely thrilling. Zevander is introduced as a professional killer with a reputation and a grudge, Maevyth as a woman the world has already decided to be rid of, and the machinery that will eventually push them together is assembled in front of you before it starts running.
Twenty Hours Turns a Slow Burn Into Immersion
The earliest entry on the record, filed in October 2024, supplies the two numbers romantasy readers actually use before buying: five stars for the book and two and a half for heat, with major slow burn attached as a warning rather than a complaint. It also gives an unusually honest structural note, that the opening thirty-five percent is world and character construction and that the hook properly set around a hundred pages in. Those markers describe a printed copy read months before this recording existed, but the shape they describe carries over to audio exactly.
That shape is the argument for the recording. Twenty hours is a long ramp, and a slow burn works differently when the waiting is measured in listening sessions rather than in chapters skimmed at speed. The lore accumulates instead of being absorbed in one sitting, the names stop being unfamiliar, and by the time the bargain at the center of the plot arrives, the world has become a place rather than a glossary. Readers who bounce off dense fantasy openings on the page often find the audio version easier for exactly this reason: you cannot skim, so the construction has time to do its work.
James Cassidy's Solo Credit Hides a Duet
The pool's only four-star entry names the friction directly: the world-building felt confusing at first, and only settled once the reader had spent real time inside it. That reader still came away praising a richly developed world layered with lore and characters carrying heavy emotional baggage, along with mysterious ravens and a spider or two for the macabre quota. Take the reservation seriously anyway. A confusing opening on the page becomes a harder problem in audio, where you cannot flip back to check which faction the magehood belongs to, and the ramp here is measured in hours.
The credit is the more serious issue. The description closes by stating that the book is narrated in duet style, while the narrator field carries exactly one name, James Cassidy. Duet narration takes at least two performers by definition, so someone who worked on this recording does not appear on the record at all. On a romance with two perspectives that is not a clerical footnote: the second voice is half of what a listener is buying, and no buyer can check that performer's other work before committing to twenty hours. The content warnings are handled the same way, promised in full on the author's website rather than carried here, so a listener who needs them has to go looking elsewhere first.
Gothic Atmosphere Fans Should Enter, Heat-Seekers Should Wait
A December 2025 response from South Africa compresses the pitch to six words: phenomenal, and a perfect spooky gothic read. That is the audience test. If the words you shop by are gothic, cursed, atmospheric and slow burn, this delivers all four without hedging, and it delivers them at a length that lets each one develop. Listeners who came to Keri Lake through Nocticadia get a continuity of register rather than a repeat, and anyone who likes their fantasy romance built on a magic system with teeth will find the system here doing actual structural work.
Two groups should think twice. Anyone who wants the romance to move should know that two and a half out of five on heat, with a burn this slow, means a long wait for very little, and twenty hours makes the wait literal. Anyone who needs content warnings in hand before starting should collect them off the author's site first, because the record supplies only a general note about mature content. Series readers should also be aware that this is the opening book of The Eating Woods, that the record leaves its series number blank, and that the plot ends where a first volume ends rather than where a standalone would.
Quick Take
- Voice: the description specifies duet style while the record credits a single performer, James Cassidy, leaving half the casting off the page
- Big ideas: banishment and arcane prophecy, a cursed lord and a marked outsider, slow-burn romance inside a gothic horror frame
- Atmosphere: macabre, atmospheric, patient long before it burns
- Worth it?: a dense twenty-hour gothic fantasy that makes you wait, and repays the wait if the opening third does not lose you.
A Few Questions About Anathema
Is this audiobook the first book in The Eating Woods series?
Yes. The description identifies it as the opening full-length entry in The Eating Woods, though the record leaves the series number field empty, which is easy to misread as a standalone. Plan for a continuing story rather than a closed one, and expect threads left deliberately open at the end.
Do the ratings here actually reflect the audiobook?
Only loosely. The lowest entry in the visible pool, a two-star note filed from Belgium in April 2025, reads in full that the reader's copy was missing pages, which is a complaint about a physical printing weighted equally with responses about the story. Several others describe page counts and percentages rather than listening.
How much horror sits alongside the romance?
Enough to matter, not enough to make it a horror novel. The description calls it a touch of horror, and the effect is closer to sustained dread than to sudden shocks: grotesque creatures, a forest that consumes people, and a prophecy that treats the protagonist as a sacrifice. The romance stays central throughout.
