Format: ebook
Published: October 13th, 2020
Age: Adult
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Goodreads
Rating: 3/5 Stars
I really wanted to like this one. It was, after all, a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee, and seemed fairly well received when it was published. I really like historical fantasy, too, so was excited to check out Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches. Unfortunately, overall it fell flat in multiple ways. Where it’s good, it’s really good, but the same rings true for where it’s bad.
On a personal taste level, so much of this book just got a bit depressing without any sense of why except to make it ‘dark’ and ‘gritty’. There was just no let-up on it, not even for a moment, and sometimes I really do appreciate an occasional ‘lighter’ touch, even if it’s just there to give the reader a bit of a breather before things get worse. The book dragged on, and on, and on, with pages dedicated to simply telling us the girls were on the run and hiding. There were stretches where nothing really interesting happened.
The atmosphere and time period are definitely interesting choices, especially with the vast changes taking place in 1893. This is set in an alternative version of our world, one where magic is known to have existed, and the witch trials were going after very real witches. The magic system was intriguing, using folk and fairy tales as well as nursey rhymes to create spells. As much as I liked that aspect, in some places it made the magic feel a little ‘twee’, especially in contrast to the events going on.
And I think that shows one of the biggest problems with the book. It struggles between a kind of ‘cute’, witchy aesthetic and a book that wants to say something meaningful. Not to say cutesy books can’t say something meaningful, but it doesn’t quite match here with the tone and darker topics. This is also where the book got a bit clumsy. There’s a whole thing about men’s and women’s magic, and how they’re separate and viewed differently, but instead of exploring it, it’s simply a vehicle to show how girls can do it just as well as the boys. I think it’s almost an unfair comparison, but the best book I’ve seen that handles the idea of separate magic quite well is Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, and it was a bit frustrating to see it handled poorly here.
I appreciate what Harrow was trying to do in this book, especially with the ‘feminist’ angles, but these aspects felt a little too clumsy. The main three characters – sisters Juniper, Agnes and Beatrice – feel like archetypes rather than fully fleshed out characters. There’s a sense of deliberateness to that, to a point, but again, it doesn’t quite work with what the novel is trying to do overall. There’s also a strong ‘not like other girls’ vibe to Juniper that gets frustrating. Oh, and characters have multiple names, with some going by their ‘public’ first name and others going by their middle ‘mother’ names. That got confusing, more than once. The side characters, too, felt like they had potential, but ultimately fall flat.
I didn’t strongly dislike this book; I thought it was decent, and it wasn’t a pain to read, but overall I’d probably rate this 2.5-2.75 stars. It tries to say something, but in doing so gets a bit messy and convoluted, in a way that felt like it could have been more meaningful if it had been a little simpler.
Reading Challenge
Avengers Challenge!
Prompt (Bonus): Scarlet Witch – magic, women scorned, witches…
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Unwrapping Words 