User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!3/5 ⭐
I honestly, HONESTLY wished I could give this book more stars but I simply couldn't.
This is an unpopular opinion, but it's my personal experience with it so I'll just say it as it is.
I was very excited when I got this, I was sure that this is going to be such a great read for me and, in the beginning, it actually was, I was still pretty excited. But after about 1/4 of the book, I felt how I lose interest.
I couldn't feel any kind of attachment towards the characters and they sometimes felt too lost in their own world, too stubborn, too shallow for their own good.
There were also lots of other characters that appeared out of nowhere and as much as I wanted to remember all of them, they kind of overwhelmed and confused me.
Info-dumping was too a bit much at some points, extending the book more than necessary; I felt like it was too much for nothing that couldn't have been outlined in a few phrases here and there.
All those aspects made the reading slow and a bit unpleasant for me, because between not really connecting with the characters and the too-much-information passages, I kind of forgot about my initial excitement regarding the book.
There were great aspects to it, I'm not being a little petty witch to forget about them. The book itself is well-documented, it's obvious that the author did her homework really well. The social, political and historical aspects are also strong here and the idea of, you know, powerful, magical, anarchist ladies is what I love to see in books.
I am so sorry I didn't like this as much as I wanted and I still want to like. But I cannot lie if my heart wasn't; there with it.
(Book-styled)
Rating: really liked it
Oh my goodness! I think I can write millions of times the same word over and over again! I loved it so much! I loved it so much! I loved it so much! I loved it so much! I loved it so much! I loved it so much! I loved it so much!
Okay! That’s enough! Mesmerizing, earth shattering world building, well-crafted, fantastic characters, unputdownable magical, witchy world you never want to leave : a great waltz of fantasy, historical fiction and romance!
Hollywood producers who are looking for great stories, please stop procrastinating and pick this up instead of burying your heads into nonsense remakes! This is freaking good!
As a second time the author stole my heart!!!
Rating: really liked it
‘she thinks of the ways people make for themselves when there are none, the impossible things they render possible.’ this is a really lovely tale. there is such an elegant quality to the storytelling and characters that really benefits the messages of empowerment this book holds.
the writing is probably the storys greatest strength. its really quite exquisite. it feels traditional, but approachable. vivid, yet grounded. it showcases the sisterly bond between witches in a tone that is lighter than other stories about witchcraft.
my only critique would be the pacing is very slow and lost my interest at times. theres only so much admirable characters and pretty words can do. maybe i was in the mood for something more engaging and not something so narrative heavy. but it feels quite unfair to give this anything less than 4 stars.
i think readers who are willing to be patient enough to see this story through will find it just as magical and inspirational as i did, if not more!
↠ 3.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
Alix E Harrow replicates the wondrous magic of The Ten Thousand Doors of January which I adored, in this character driven feminist adventure story in this fierce and beautiful homage to the power of women in all their forms, including the three female archetypes represented by the Eastwood sisters, the mother, the maiden and the crone. It is a time where the power of the history of witches and witchcraft has been diminished to virtually nothing, existing only in the below the radar voices and rhymes. It is 1893, the Eastwood sisters were once close, but splintered apart and estranged for many years, suffering at the hands of their abusive father, only to meet and be drawn together once again at a suffragette rally at St George's Square in New Salem, bringing their considerable strengths to join the fight for women's right to vote.
The three sisters are different and distinct characters in their own right, Beatrice Belladonna is the eldest, Agnes Amarath, and the youngest, James Juniper, have to face their personal history of pain and sorrow, and in order to deploy magic in the coming battle ahead, they will need the will, the words and the way, recovering the history and power of witchcraft to challenge the rule and domination of men. This is going to be no easy task, there are the widespread fears and divisions in the community and other obstacles on the dangerous path to changing and breaking the existing power structures that divide, discriminate and disempower, and there is a ruthless and menacing force that must be defeated too. In a twisted magical narrative, hope, unity and support is needed and sought amongst other marginalised sectors, such as the black and LBQT+ communities.
Harrow's prose is lyrical in her gripping, compulsive and spellbinding storytelling and her world building is stellar. I found myself totally immersed and caught up in the wide range of diverse characters, rooting for the sisters and their allies. One of the best things about the novel is how it echoes so many of our contemporary realities in the modern world and the issues that divide us, it is a thought provoking read on gender, women's rights, race, homophobia, sexuality, survival, feminism and more. This is a brilliant read, that for me felt so meaningful and captured my imagination, I loved all the Eastwood sisters, having to give up everything in order to gain the possibility of gaining everything. Simply wonderful and highly recommended. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
ARC provided by the publisher—Orbit—in exchange for an honest review.3.5/5 stars
Similar to The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches will be a big hit among many readers.Not even a year has passed since its first publication, and
The Ten Thousand Doors of January already has 33.3k ratings and 6.7k reviews on Goodreads. For those who don’t pay attention to how the number of Goodreads rating/reviews counts to the popularity and general reception of a specific book, believe me when I say that Harrow has achieved something incredible with her debut at an astonishing rate. I’m confident that the feminist story told in
The Once and Future Witches will also appeal to many readers. This, however, doesn’t mean that the content of this novel is similar to
The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
The Once and Future Witches did retain some of the “love for stories” element in Harrow’s debut, but this is, at its core, a story about sisterhood, justice, and fighting for woman’s rights.
“Association has battled for decades to afford women the same respect and legal rights enjoyed by men. It is a battle we are losing: the American public still sees women as housewives at best and witches at worst. We may be either beloved or burned, but never trusted with any degree of power.”
The story in
The Once and Future Witches takes place in the year 1893. There’s no such things as witches, there used to be, but witching is now a simple charm or nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants to be in control of a form of power, their only choices lies at the ballot box. The Eastwood sisters—Juniper, Agnes, Bella—are the three main characters of this story, and they’re looking to transform the women’s movement into the witch’s movement while healing the broken bond between the three of them. There’s no such things as witches. But there will be.
“All of us grew up on stories of wicked witches. The villages they cursed, the plagues they brewed. We need to show people what else we have to offer, give them better stories.”
I do have to mention a caveat that I’m not a huge fan of witches stories; I wouldn’t say I disliked them, I just don’t have a big adoration towards the story. This is also why it’s safe to consider a 3.5 stars rating from me for this novel a high recommendation by my standard. If this novel was written by a less-skillful author, I have a feeling I would’ve given the novel a lower rating. It helped very much to my reading experience, though, that
The Once and Future Witches was a thoroughly character-driven story; the three main characters have distinctive personalities, past, and voices to their narration that’s easy to empathize and care for. The themes of justice being discussed in the book are incredibly important in our civilization. It is when the characters gathered, schemed, and fought for their rights and freedom while also doing their best to heal the damages in their bonds that the story excels the most; I wanted even more out of them.
“Must a thing be bound and shelved in order to matter? Some stories were never written down. Some stories were passed by whisper and song, mother to daughter to sister. Bits and pieces were lost over the centuries, I’m sure, details shifted, but not all of them.”
Unfortunately, and this is going to be very subjective, the pacing of the book didn’t click really well with me. In the serious, emotional, or intense moments, I was utterly gripped and compelled to read the book; the pages flew by during these sections. But the slow moments, which I usually love in a character-driven story, felt way too slow at times. Despite Harrow’s continuous display of her beautifully accessible and lyrical prose within her third-person present tense narrative, there were sections where I had to push myself to continue because the plot seemingly fell to a complete halt for me. This was especially true every time the three main characters weren’t together, which—understandably—happened more often than I preferred. Their characterizations and developments with each other were well-realized, though, thankfully.
“Her home was always witch-tales and words, stories into which she could escape when her own became too terrible to bear.”
Although the pacing in the novel didn’t fully click with me,
The Once and Future Witches goes to show that Harrow certainly can write great standalone novels. Plus, the ending was satisfying, and I’m sure this is another story that will stick for a long time with many readers.
“She thought a survival was a selfish thing, a circle drawn tight around your heart. She thought the more people you let inside that circle the more ways the world had to hurt you, the more ways you could fail them and be failed in turn. But what if it’s the opposite, and there are more people to catch you when you fall? What if there’s an invisible tipping point somewhere along the way when one becomes three becomes infinite, when there are so many of you inside that circle that you become hydra-headed, invincible?”
Official release date: 15th October 2020 (UK) and 13th October 2020 (US)You can order the book from: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Book Depository (Free shipping)The quotes in this review were taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.You can find this and the rest of my reviews at Novel NotionsSpecial thanks to my Patrons on Patreon for giving me extra support towards my passion for reading and reviewing!
My Patrons: Alfred, Alya, Annabeth, Devin, Hamad, Jimmy Nutts, Joie, Mike, Miracle, Nicholas, Zoe.
Rating: really liked it
10/13/2020: IT’S PUBLICATION DAY! 🥀
“Witching and women’s rights. Suffrage and spells. They’re both…” She gestures in midair again. “They’re both a kind of power, aren’t they? The kind we aren’t allowed to have.” The kind I want, says the hungry shine of her eyes.
It’s a special kind of heartbreak when you want
so badly to like a book more than you actually do; this is precisely what happened with me and The Once and Future Witches. I know that many readers will adore this story about suffragette witches—personally, though, its execution just didn't really work for me.
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In this world, there were once witches so powerful they ruled kingdoms for hundreds of years. Witches who could change people’s lives, who could curse the wicked and put entire castles to sleep. But they were hunted and purged, and what magic remains now is watered-down, a flicker where there was once a blazing inferno.
The year is 1893, 110 years since the original Salem was razed to the ground. New Salem—the City Without Sin—has been erected in its place. Juniper, Agnes, and Beatrice, the once inseparable Eastwood sisters, have been estranged for seven years. But on this spring equinox, they are drawn by powerful magic to a square in New Salem, where they witness a tear in the fabric of reality that reveals a mysterious tower in the sky: the key to reclaiming the power that has been denied to them and all witches for centuries.
Together, the sisters form the Sisters of Avalon, a suffragette group for women and witches dedicated to recovering their powers. Along the way, the book (a standalone novel btw!) touches on the rights of Black women, queer women, working-class and poor women.
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Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried (AND VERY HARD I DID) I just couldn’t connect meaningfully with any part of this story.
At the end of the day, the writing and I meshed like oil and water. Harrow writes prose that is just shy of purple—the kind of thickly descriptive storytelling that is
overladen with quirky adjectives and metaphors, and that readers will either find wholeheartedly enchanting or vehemently irritating. I was very much in the latter category.
Bear with me as I rant a little bit about a stylistic detail that drove me, personally, up the wall. The first half of the book is encumbered by hyphenated adjectives that I couldn’t stop noticing! (I ended up keeping a list, lol, and it was way longer than it should’ve been.) Every page contained at least three or four words connected by a hyphen, some of which made sense—like “hollow-cheeked”—or were beautiful—“rose-eaten.”
Most, though, were absurd and really detracted from my reading experience: feather-fragile, black-bracken, coal-scummed, rattle-creak. And then there were the hyphenated nouns that were utterly unnecessary: youngest-sister, morning-birds, night-creatures, dragon-scales, ear-hair, nothing-girl, north-side, creek-stones, sickle-moon. The weird thing is that after the 40% mark, these hyphenated descriptors pretty much vanished? I was appreciative (it felt much easier to read) but also baffled at the inconsistency.
I also felt that the protagonists, who are meant to represent recurrent female archetypes in fairytales, didn’t end up being more than their tropes: Juniper = Maiden (aka the wild one), Bella = Crone (aka the wise one), Agnes = Mother (aka the strong one). I appreciated specific moments and scenes (see below!) but overall I just couldn’t connect with any of the sisters.
Their respective roles are hammered repeatedly into the reader’s head, akin to the book’s
heavy-handed treatment of its themes of feminism and the empowerment of women. Women’s rights—like other issues affecting the autonomy and wellbeing of marginalized people—are not up for debate. But… tell me something I don’t know? Tell me something with nuance and ambivalence? Or at least tell it to me in a way that isn’t weighed down by flowery writing that holds me and my emotions at a distance?
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That being said, there was a not-insignificant number of things about this story that I truly enjoyed.
I loved reading about Bella’s relationship with Cleopatra Quinn, a Black witch. I loved its themes of resistance and rebellion against patriarchy (tempered by Agnes, who recognizes that
“Sometimes you can’t fight. Sometimes you can only survive.”). I loved the camaraderie between all of the book’s women characters. And I especially I loved its examination of what counts as knowledge, what should be reproduced and written about in theses, history texts, and sermons. This book
head-on tackles the devaluing of women’s knowledge—be it folklore or fairytales, nursery rhymes or recipes—by patriarchal systems. It reclaims these modes of knowledge by imbuing them with literal magic: turns out, the witches’ lost powers have been passed down from generation to generation through folklore, fairytales, nursery rhymes, and recipes. I found this so, so beautiful.
“Must a thing be bound and shelved in order to matter? Some stories were never written down. Some stories were passed by whisper and song, mother to daughter to sister. Bits and pieces were lost over the centuries, I’m sure, details shifted, but not all of them.”
Bottom line: The Once and Future Witches will be an incandescent story that speaks straight to someone’s heart—unfortunately, she isn’t me.
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made a playlist to go with this pretty, pretty novel 🥀
Thank you NetGalley and Redhook Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review! All quotes were taken from an uncorrected advance proof and will be checked with the final published copy.
Rating: really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best fantasy 2020! what will happen?*********************************************
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task: #16 Read a doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, written by a woman
HAPPY SPOOKTOBER!
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okay, so this was a bit of a cheat on my part. i knew going into it that this wasn’t going to be the most spooktobery of spooktober reads, but my whole deal of “only reading horror in october” is a self-imposed condition-tradition, and since i could justify reading this because witches are a halloween-decoration staple, i let my conscience be my guide because i really REALLY wanted to read it. and while it was in no way scary, it was scary-
good. as much as i loved The Ten Thousand Doors of January, i loved this one even
more. it’s as beautifully-written as her debut, but it’s a much bigger story, more ambitious and more rewarding. it’s about three estranged sisters reuniting, but it’s also about Sisterhood; about what women can accomplish when they are united in a common cause, and it’s both a celebration and a triumphant battle cry of defiance and female power.
the worldbuilding is incredibly dense—set in alt-history 1893 in the town of new salem, it loops in historical elements like the suffragette movement, the underground railroad, the triangle shirtwaist factory fire, the salem witch trials, and fairytales (genderswapping their authors into the sisters grimm and a female perrault). harrow packs a lot into this story, but every part has weight and purpose and it never feels overburdened.
the magical elements are handled with great restraint. it’s not (all) presented in big, dramatic, showy spectacles, but in small, household magic cobbled together and repurposed inventively—female ingenuity making the most out of what they have; their magic hidden in plain sight in all the overlooked and underestimated domestic trappings of women’s spheres. it’s a practical, modest;
“That’s all magic is, really: the space between what you have and what you need.” here, magic is a legacy handed down through generations, what women use to compensate for what they’re not permitted to have or be or want, or as she so eloquently, alliteratively states,
“witchcraft isn’t one thing but many things, all the ways and words women have found to wreak their wills on the world.”i’m not particularly drawn to witch stories, but in order to fulfill a social anthropology requirement my freshman year at nyu i took a history of witchcraft course that i ended up lo-ving, and reading this, i recognized enough in the detail work to make me appreciate how much dingdang research harrow must have done. i’m in no way slighting her powers of imagination, but there’s a lot of history in this alt-historical, which takes time and effort to accumulate, and skill to incorporate without it seeming clunky. it is also to her credit that she included witchcraft traditions with more of a global consideration than most writers, drawing from the west indies and russian folklore to make a richly textured magical melting pot.
inclusion is, after all, one of the big themes here. historically, witchcraft accusations were essentially a way for a society to rid itself of its troublesome women—to get a new wife, to remove a sexual rival, to punish a trollop, to divest itself of the burden of the elderly. midwives and others who worked in the dark arts of women’s health were also frequently targeted, for all the reasons you’d expect. in repressive societies, nonconformists who offended the olde god-fearing sensibilities could very publicly be executed as witches, keeping potentially unruly women in line. and harrow makes a place for them here, a witchy found family of these mothers and maidens and crones, these whores and abortionists and foreigners, these lesbians and trans women and women who wanted more from life than they were given. AND SHE GIVES THEM BROOMSTICKS.
i love her so much.
four years ago, i read her story The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage (read it for free here), giving it five stars and ending my review with the declaration: “this author has just made my watch list.” then last year, having forgotten that vow and not recognizing the name, i read both The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and
A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies (read it for free here), and i gave both of THEM five stars. and that’s pretty rare for me. a five star book means it hit me and lodged in my brainheart. going into this one, i was apprehensive because the early reviews ranged from disappointed to baffled, but that was not at all my own experience—this one hit me hard with its characters and lodged in my brainheart but good with its breathtaking prose and its layers and layers of build. and so many great
lines. i'm a filthy page-folder, and even though i didn't want to dog ear this one at first because it is so beautiful, and also because it’s so hard to find a pagefold in a deckle-edged book, eventually i couldn't help myself and i regret nothing.
she has an as-yet-untitled book coming out in 2021, and i cannot wait.
this is more of a note-to-self, but feel free to peer over my shoulder: the whole time i was reading this i was picturing bella as daisy from Giant Days, Vol. 1:
and as i was writing this review today, i realized that confident, messy, impulsive esther would make a fine juniper (tho she's no maiden)
while fierce, independent, and protective susan is very much team agnes.
in short, witches.
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this beauty just arrived at my HOME! and i'm stuck looking at it longingly for at least a week before i'll have time to dive in. ggrrrrrrrrr
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i can't breathe with that cover. i big-need this.
come to my blog!
Rating: really liked it
‘Proper witching is just a conversation with that red heartbeat, which only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way.
… everything important comes in threes.’ 'Once upon a time there were three sisters…’ Three Eastwood sisters, to be precise. Agnes, Bella, and James Juniper. They live in a world where magic and power were female, once. Now it is all hushed words passed from mother to daughter, hidden workings and small tricks, all the better to stay beneath notice. For in this place, which is also our place, women are less than they were. They are made small by the power of men— and expected to stay that way. The year is 1893 and in New Salem the suffragists are rallying for the vote. But the ballot box isn’t the only path to change and a little witchery might be what’s needed to counter the arrival of a new danger, one cloaked in shadows and sickness. Juniper certainly thinks so. But these are sisters are riven by their past, too uncertain with each other in the present. To have a future, they’ll need mend the hurts that broke them, find a way to bring back what was forgotten, and forge something new… something wild and witchy.
This is one of those books that you manage to keep at an emotional distance for only the briefest time before falling head over heels. The opening pages bring a smile as you immediately recognise that Alix Harrow is as just good as you remembered. Or perhaps even better. You marvel again at the beauty and lyricism of her writing, at how quickly she can show you the essence of a character, at how she transforms old tales into new. And then all of that is forgotten as you become lost in the story of these women, become part of their struggles in a way that feels transformative. For this is a book about the power of women and of family. It is history and myth and magic woven together, a literary fairy tale threaded with real world issues. It is a story for our time and for all times.
In following the journey of these sisters, the wider notion of sisterhood in all its forms and possibilities is opened up before us. This is a novel of connection and acceptance and openness and inclusion; a book about women who are fed up, no… angry, at feeling desperate, or trapped, or fearful for themselves or their daughters. Here women must find in each other the way forward, as always it is together that we are strongest. It’s not as easy as that, of course. There are hurdles in the forming of a community, especially when those kept down and pushed out by systems of oppression are also taught to be afraid of each other, to believe in the kind of stereotypes and limitations of other groups and individuals they so reject about themselves. This is especially relevant when it comes to racial difference. In the novel, as today, black women are vulnerable to more hatred, more prejudice, more persecution, and more exclusion. The hesitant and carefully deepening relationship between the strong, but isolated black community, focused through one amazing character in particular, and other characters within the book (I can’t say too much here, it’s spoilery) is sensitively but powerfully done. It made my heart sing to see so much togetherness, no matter how slow or cautious the process has to be. Even as the parallels of discrimination and division fill you with rage and bitter recognition, so books like this offer you hope. It suggests, and not gently, that we must all sacrifice, men and women together, to make the world anew, to create something better for us all.
I have never read anything like this and I honestly love everything about it. Even though I read this advance copy on my kindle, I know that it’s a novel i’m going to have to have for my own, a physical copy on my bookshelves to reflect the story’s place in my heart. I already can’t wait to read it again.
It will hardly surprise you to hear that this is not only one of my books of the year, but of all time. It could not have come at a better moment and I urge you all to read it.
ARC via Netgalley
Rating: really liked it
Last year I had the good fortune to receive an ARC of The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow and I absolutely adored it. I was charmed by the characters, the plot, the prose, everything. Therefore Harrow’s next novel, The Once and Future Witches, was immediately placed on my TBR and I was thrilled to once again get an ARC of it from NetGalley.
Sadly I had a very different reaction to this book and I’m rather disappointed because the majority of early reviews for The Once and Future Witches are overwhelmingly positive .... so why do I feel like I read a different novel?
I feel I should begin by mentioning that I recently read Alice Hoffman’s “Magic Lessons” which is also a book about witches (set in the 1600s though). That book is one I greatly enjoyed and I think because that too explores the feminine through witching that reading another witchy-type book so soon after had a negative impact on my enjoyment. I usually like to mix up the themes of my close-together reads because I do have a tendency to get bored if they touch on any similar subjects.
The story in The Once and Future Witches follows three estranged sisters as they come together to fight for women’s rights in 1893 in New Salem. So hello feminism and placing women front and centre which I typically love!
But these three sisters, James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna, also want to bring back the old powers of women’s witching through their suffragette type movement, because in this world witches and witching are a thing of the past. Old Salem was burned to the ground and all the powerful witches along with it. Witching now is just fairytales, nursery rhymes, and small charms.
As the tag line for the book says “There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.”
What I liked about this book is that it is a book about women reclaiming their agency, their power and I enjoyed how it explored the ideas of sisterhood through its many forms (blood, friendship, love). The book dissected the many hurdles there are in creating a movement to fight oppression. Whether those were outside obstacles from others in society (fear, intolerance, prejudice etc.) or the inner barriers that women face (self-acceptance, fear of change, anger at their plight etc.)
And I liked how it wove together aspects of history, myths and fairytales to create a really interesting and unique setting for the novel...
But after that I struggled.
This is primarily a character driven novel which are typically my favourite kinds of books. And one could argue that each sister (and each supporting character) are unique in their descriptions and actions etc... but I found them all to be quite flat. Especially the three sisters. I really don’t feel that they ever truly became more than the trope on which they were based i.e. the maiden, the mother and the crone. And I also feel there were too many characters in my opinion which made it difficult for me to really remember who was who at times. To me this novel just lacked an emotional connection.
I think however, that my inability to connect with the main characters of the three sisters, and to see them as anything other than the tropes on which they were based, probably stems from the fact I was so painfully bored by this book.
From the earliest chapters I felt like I was all at sea. I found the writing style to be incredibly repetitive and very info-dumpy. The pacing of the book drove me batty too! At times I was very engaged and eagerly turned the pages (there were some gripping and intense moments)... but more often than not I found the pace to be painfully slow moving and reading felt more like a chore. I had to force myself to keep reading because this was an ARC that I was committed to reviewing.
Sadly The Once and Future Witches just wasn’t to my personal taste.
*An e-copy was kindly provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley for honest review* This edition publishing 15th October 2020, Orbit / Little Brown Book Group UK
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Rating: really liked it
Wow! Just finished reading this one, which was recommended by many writer friends. It's a novel like no other - a wondrous blend of alternative history, folklore and fairy tale, bound together by a theme of women's rights and women's empowerment. Unforgettable characters, rich and beautiful writing, a powerful story that will keep you reading late into the night. The word brilliant comes to mind. Highly recommended.
Rating: really liked it
“Juniper holds up a hand. “You’re here because you want more for yourselves, better for your daughters. Because it’s easy to ignore a woman.” Juniper’s lips twist in a feral smile. “But a hell of a lot harder to ignore a witch.”
By all accounts this book was supposed to be perfect for me. A feminist gritty fantasy about witches and suffragettes, with plot not hinging on love stories but actual human rights causes, with fairytales inspiring plot points and evocative poetic language. Not to mention that I’ve become a fan of Alix Harrow this year, after a couple of short stories and a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated fantasy The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
(If you haven’t yet read anything by Alix Harrow, I suggest you take about 10 minutes out of your day and head over here to read her short story “A Witch’s Guide to Escape”, one of the best short stories I’ve read in a long time.)
In an alternate 1893, witchcraft is officially stamped out. It used to be ubiquitous and mostly for women, but a few centuries prior St. George had burned Old Salem and its inhabitants to the ground and there is no room for witching in the strict and proper New Salem. There is also no room for women’s rights or suffrage - because everyone knows that women are always just a step away from all that evil witching and therefore need to firmly know their “proper” place and not put a toe out of line.
“Witching is a small, shameful thing, worked in kitchens and bedrooms and boarding houses, half-secret.”
But the memories of the times where there used to be witching and power still linger, and some spells are furtively handed down mother to daughter, quietly, secretly, furtively.
The tensions simmer and boil, and threaten to blow the lid off this barely contained cauldron of lies and secrets and resentment and oppression. “Seems to me they’re the same thing, more or less.”
“What are?”
Juniper’s eyes reflect the bronze shine of Saint George’s standing in the square. “Witching and women’s rights. Suffrage and spells. They’re both . . .” She gestures in midair again. “They’re both a kind of power, aren’t they? The kind we aren’t allowed to have.” The kind I want, says the hungry shine of her eyes.”
And yet, despite me running at this book with open arms, screaming that I’m ready to love it unconditionally, something did not quite click. I couldn’t understand why for a while - there’s objectively nothing wrong with this story - until it hit me:
it’s the characters. For the life of me I could not bring myself to care about the characters, despite enjoying the premise and the plot. Especially Juniper - the fiery teenager, a
“vicious, vengeful girl“ who was supposed to be the passionate heart and the moral compass of this book - I fluctuated between wanting to put her into hypothetical counseling vs imaginary detention. I understood their plight and grievances and desires - and yet my cold cynical heart refused to *feel* it on the more visceral level.
“She understands that the Women’s Association wants one kind of power—the kind you can wear in public or argue in the courtroom or write on a slip of paper and drop in a ballot box—and that Juniper wants another. The kind that cuts, the kind with sharp teeth and talons, the kind that starts fires and dances merry around the blaze.
And she understands that if she intends to pursue it, she’ll have to do it on her own.”
————
But what made me keep reading despite not feeling much for the character was the strength with which Alix Harrow gets her messages through. It’s the story of wanting - no, needing - things to be right. The need to assert yourself, make yourself heard, wield the power that the world wants to deny you because in its eyes you and the others like you are unworthy, less than full persons. It’s the story of sacrifice that comes with the fight, and the sacrifice that also comes if you choose to step back and not to fight.
“She begins to believe that the words and ways are whichever ones a woman has, and that a witch is merely a woman who needs more than she has.”
And it’s the story of sisterhood - not just biological but also of the found family, the bonds you forge through thick and thin with kindred souls (and a few men get to be a part of this sisterhood as well). It’s the story of anger and the story of love and healing old painful wounds.
“Agnes learned young that you have a family right up until you don’t. You take care of people right up until you can’t, until you have to choose between staying and surviving.”
After I finished it, I took a few days to figure out what I really thought of it. And in the end the good outweighed the bad. It is not the first book that I ultimately liked *despite* the characters (that’s my constant battle with Kim Stanley Robinson’s books where I love the worlds he creates and cannot muster more than just lukewarm feelings for the characters).
3.5 stars, and because GR requires rounding up or down, I’ll tentatively round up.
“That’s all magic is, really: the space between what you have and what you need.”
Rating: really liked it
"Magic is the distance between what a person has and what they need...the thing that fills the slim gap between the possible and impossible, that makes a way when there isn't one".
-Alix E. Harrow
"...proper witching...only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way". "Everything important comes in threes".
Home was 23 acres on the west side of the Big Sandy River in Crow County. "Home was her sisters, once. But they left and never came back". James Juniper Eastwood, the youngest Eastwood sister, was wild and feral. On the day of the spring equinox of 1893, she jumped off a train 200 miles from home "with nothing but loose change and witch-ways in her pockets and no place to go". Her likeness was splashed on a train station poster. "Miss James Juniper Eastwood. Seventeen Years of Age, wanted for Murder and Suspected Witchcraft". Mama Mags (her grandma who raised her) said, "that temper will get you burnt at the damn stake...a wise woman keeps her burning on the inside". Juniper is angry "...mama died to soon...daddy did not die soon enough...". Her sisters left her and she's mad at herself for missing them. She feels compelled to attend the New Salem Women's Association Rally at St. George's Square...an urgent voice speaks. "Why should women wait in the shadows while their fathers and husbands determine our fate?"
Agnes Amaranth Eastwood, the middle sister, was strong and unflinchingly steady. She worked as a mill girl, cotton dust coating her tongue. She kept to herself. Mama Mags told her, "every woman draws a circle around herself. Sometimes she has to be the only thing inside it". Arriving at St. George's Square, she hears Suffragist Miss Cady Stone speak of women's rights. Women have been chattel in a man's world. A rally is under way to empower women by fighting for the right to vote.
Beatrice Belladonna Eastwood, quietly worked as a librarian at New Salem College. Beatrice, the oldest sister, understood the "weight of words...her black notebook, her most prized possession was "half-filled with witch-tales and nursery rhymes...stories she'll never tell and spells she'll never work...[looking] at the words, she can almost feel her sisters' hands in hers again". Leaving work, she is "following the witch wind to the middle of the square"...some sort of rally...a circling chant.
"The wayward sisters, hand in hand,
Burned and bound, our stolen crown,
But what is lost, that can't be found?"
On the eve of the spring equinox of 1893, the three Eastwood sisters were drawn toward the square and pulled into a spell after seven years apart. What did they see? "A sudden wind. Stars. A Tower. A doorway with certain words inscribed in it...an interlocking circle of three". "Witching and woman's rights... Suffrage and spells...they're both a kind of power. The kind we aren't allowed to have". Juniper said, "I saw...shadows moving in ways they shouldn't, twisting together. It was witching, but darker and stranger than anything Mags ever did". The Eastwood sisters needed three components in order to use magic and mayhem to upset a male dominated world. The will, the words, and the way. They had the will. "Are there words and ways waiting among children's verses...power passed in secret from mother to daughter, like swords disguised as sewing needles?"
A diverse cast of women, women from all walks of life...the mainly upper class Suffragette ladies...the Daughters of Tituba, a Black sisterhood of witches...familiars...and an occasional male supporter, will meet secretly and work for a better, more tolerant tomorrow. "We could win it all, stop worrying so much about what a woman should or should not do, what's respectable and what isn't. We must stand and fight, all of us together. 'All for one, and one for all'." This reviewer has merely touched upon the wonderment of reading "The Once and Future Witches" by Alix E. Harrow. This work of historical fiction is a masterpiece to behold!
Thank you Redhook Books and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
*Rated 4.5/5 stars!Thank you to the publisher for sending me an early copy of this book via NetGalley!I knew I would enjoy this book, but I didn't predict just how much I would come to
love it. When the suffragette movement inspires a witchy revolution in the town of New Salem, a whole host of characters are pulled into this web of words and will. Not only was it a story of witchcraft, but a story of sisterhood and wayward families. It was a story that proved how sheer willpower alone can make a person very,
very powerful.
The thing that instantly pulled me in was the writing style. Alix E. Harrow's way with words is truly something worth reading. Her descriptions flow so smoothly despite being more picturesque than most, and with a hint of cleverness that proved fun to spot. Imagery would be woven between the three sisters, adapting slightly for each one's situation - for instance, the metaphor of despair as a black dog weaving around them all. The way their stories are inherently tied together, through thick and thin, made such imagery feel folkloric and gave it the exact ancient storyteller vibe it wanted.
The twists in folklore itself was a fun addition too, with famous fairytales retold and twisted to foreshadow the events of the book, or famous people genderbent but recognisable as fun easter eggs. The Brothers Grimm, for instance, became The Sisters Grimm and the basis to a lot of the witchcraft within the story. Children's rhymes became spells, and everything seemed at once both uncannily mundane but magical at the same time. It really was quite a feat to accomplish.
As was the natural incorporation of so many characters. While we have our three sisters leading the way, each one come across a circle of characters that all contribute something to the story. At first I did hesitate when it came to character building, believing the Eastwood sisters to be a tad closer to caricatures than characters due to their distinctly set personalities as "the wise one, the maternal one, and the outrageous one". But as the story progressed, their characters were built upon and adapted in ways that made me forget I ever questioned it. The same happened with all the side characters - they all felt purposeful, and like well-rounded characters with clear personalities and interests. I was impressed by the ability to not only keep track of them all but also make them seem relevant and necessary.
I honestly just loved so much about this book. A slow rise towards revolution, made with so many important acknowledgements about who's involved and the ebb and flow of change, this book showed so may variations behind the word "revolution". The thought of magic being this accessible too proved to be quite a comforting thought, only bolstered by the family dynamics and loyalty providing the very foundation of this book. While it has its darkness and shows the negative aspects of society along the way, it really is a book you can easily fall into, get behind the motivations, and cheer on the characters along the way. It left me with a contented feeling, and one that I'll remember for a good long while.
P.S. I do just want to mention too for anyone interested that there is disability rep (one of the main characters), LGBTQ+rep and PoC rep!
Rating: really liked it
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“It’s a risk just to be a woman, in my experience. No matter how healthy or hardworking she is.”
I loved this more than The Ten Thousand Doors of January and I think this may a bit unpopular when this book comes out. But a story about 3 witches who tend to be sisters, which is full of nursery rhymes and is a feminist story in essence! How could I not love that! Thanks for the publisher for providing me with a physical copy of the book in exchange of an honest review.
The story takes place in the year 1893 and it starts as a story about women movement and their right to vote. I think you know how in that time men were controlling everything and women were just supposed to stay at home and serve their husbands. But the story develops from there and introduces us to the Eastwood sisters and facing a trouble that is looming over the whole city!
Harrow’s writing is magical, flowery and atmospheric. I actually preferred the writing in this book over her debut because it felt less dense and easier to go through. I just love stories and nursery rhymes because that’s where my love of reading bloomed and this book made me so nostalgic! I don’t know who formatted the book but I know they did a very good job at that! I loved how stories we all know were included in the story like the story of Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin and may other stories. The use of nursery rhymes as magic spells was something I enjoyed very much too and putting those at the start of each chapter made me just so excited and looking forward to the next one!
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a funeral
And four for birth
Five for life
Six for death
Seven to find a merry wife
I love characters with focus on more than one character although I know how challenging and risky they are to write. Fortunately, Harrow took the risk and aced this! I just love stories about families and sisters. There was also another something I liked in the writing where a chapter started with a sentence and then when we jumped to the next sister we would have the same sentence with changes fitting that sister. The story starts with introducing the sisters in the present time with a shaky relationship and they are separated and then we move a bit with the story until they meet again early in the story and then we start to understand what happened to them in the past. I loved how the three sisters were different from each other and yet cared for each other as much as expected from family members and I liked their platonic relationship. We had secondary characters who were well written as well and we have cute romance in the story featuring an LGBT relation.
The world-building is cool, I like stories about witches and I loved how the magic was done as mentioned above and in the synopsis (In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes.). If I need to criticize one thing it is that the story did not feel so 1893 to me, from the way people talked to how their lives were described, it actually felt more modern to me!
“Fate is a story people tell themselves so they can believe everything happens for a reason, that the whole awful world is fitted together like some perfect machine, with blood for oil and bones for brass. That every child locked in her cellar or girl chained to her loom is in her right and proper place”
Summary: This is a feminist story that mixes all kind of elements I like from witches to nursery rhymes to short stories. The writing, world-building and plot were all well done and although the pacing was slow sometimes, I was not bored at all! Give this a chance if you want something atmospheric and nostalgic!
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Rating: really liked it
3.5* Honestly, this started off so well! I was riveted for the first half of the book and was transported to a fairytale world. The poetic writing and magical world building was entrancing. I also loved the short fairy tales sprinkled through the novel.
I was loving it until it began to get a little tedious due to the extended prose and a lot of unwanted information. Towards the second half, I really had to try to stay focused on what was happening. Almost 30% of this book is superfluous in my opinion.
But it wasn’t a bad read overall. No regrets for picking this up, was surely worth a go.
