Quests, and enchanted forest books

[thanate]

fwilde recommended this post from a friend of hers recently, about gender divisions in the heroic quest narrative. As someone who grew up listening to folklore told, I know a lot of the exceptions, but the point stands; challenging this is not the kind of thing I spend a lot of conscious thought on, but that I tend to do ok with because I'm difficult like that. My current tally isn't too bad: in the present series, I've got one chance/destiny catching up with her "lost in the woods" and a girl with the typical male impetus of all her family dying (though it's from plague rather than a revenge narrative, and the only character who's interested in revenge turns out to be horribly misguided) and in the previous generation of powerful women the poor woodcutter's two elder daughters both went off in search of power, and found it. None of the boys (so far) goes questing on purpose, but the two princes end up in need of rescue.

Vaguely relatedly, I've been meaning to compile a list of enchanted-forest books, in the hope of possibly turning up other good ones. Off the top of my head, then:

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles-- Patricia C Wrede
Breadcrumbs-- Anne Ursau
In the Forests of Sere-- Patricia McKillip (she's got a bunch of enchanted woods, but this is the woodiest)
The Outlaws of Sherwood-- Robin McKinley (it's a highly fictional forest, at least)
A Hidden Magic-- Vivian Vande Velde
Hexwood-- DW Jones
Bones of Faerie-- Janni Lee Simner (to which I know I need to find the sequel)
Moonwise-- Greer Gilman (Cloud & Ashes is still languishing on the TBR shelf)

This is skewed a bit towards younger target audiences, and I don't know if that's due to my reading habits or based on what's actually out there. Thoughts?

Suggestions welcome!

Comments

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

There are Holdstock's Mythago Wood books, too. Though I don't recommend them.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

What did you dislike about them?

I didn't mention them above because I'd forgotten the name, but I did read something from Cat Valente about their being wonderful that made me think they might be far too 20th century/world war focused for my taste. But that's about all I know of them.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

They have incredibly messed up gender relations, IIRC. And yes, they're more in the vein of "modern people go into woods, weird stuff happens" than the historical/secondary world mode the rest of your examples lean toward.

[fwilde.livejournal.com]

I wish I had suggestions... instead, I'm adding to my reading list - thanks for the titles!

[thanate.livejournal.com]

That works too. :) If you ever do run across something else, let me know.