The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow is a supernatural thriller set in an alternate history where witchcraft is real but has been outlawed. Three estranged sisters in 1893 New Salem must band together to use illicit magic to save a world that has no use for independent women, and even less for witches.
James Juniper is hiding from the law and her magic but finds working for the suffragists surprisingly fulfilling.
Agnes Amaranth is hiding from a life of magic and family toiling in the grind of industrial textiles.
Beatrice Belladonna seems to have established a quiet life in a college library until she meets the jaunty Miss Cleopatra Quinn who crosses the color line seemingly at will as a writer for a local paper and quickly deduces Bella’s dangerous knowledge of things magical and immediate attraction to each other.
Pros And My Favourite Parts
The present tense structure of the writing adds a lot to the tension of a world on the brink of chaos and the sisters’ precarious place in it. The author gives the many characters a distinctive voice and the worldbuilding is meticulous, with a setting that mimics the American late nineteenth century industrial northwest and its strict rules and mores, using slightly altered real history to give this history a more realistic feel. There are a series of fable like asides that eventually make sense in the plot but keep a fairytale feel alive through the industrial grind.
The main story is the three sisters learning to trust each other again while having to battle a huge evil in the world with magics they mostly have to hide from an antagonistic society. Bella and Cleo finding each other is a sweet undercurrent to the main story. They have the most need to be secretive in this time and place and it was heartening to see their relationship grow.
Cons And Heads Up
There is violence throughout, because the bad guy is really bad and the sisters live in a precarious time.
The Conclusion
This book is beautifully written and will give a reader all the feels. I felt like I had been on quite an adventure by the end, and though some parts of it were harsh the message of love and trust conquering evil was well worth the knuckle biting.
Excerpt from The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
A tangled web she weaves
When she wishes to deceive.
A spell to distract and dismay, requiring cobweb gathered on the new moon & a pricked finger
Once upon a time there were three sisters.
James Juniper Eastwood was the youngest, with hair as ragged and black as crow feathers. She was the wildest of the three. The canny one, the feral one, the one with torn skirts and scraped knees and a green glitter in her eyes, like summer-light through leaves. She knew where the whip-poor-will nested and foxes denned; she could find her way home at midnight on the new moon.
But on the spring equinox of 1893, James Juniper is lost.
She limps off the train with her legs still humming from the rattle and clack of the journey, leaning heavy on her red-cedar staff, and doesn’t know which way to turn. Her plan only had two steps – step one, run, and step two, keep running – and now she’s two hundred miles from home with nothing but loose change and witch-ways in her pockets and no place to go.
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Bits and Bobs
ISBN number: 9780316422017
Publisher: Redhook Books
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