Tuesday, February 16, 2021

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow


 The book happens in an alternate world where witches are real and magic happens. The witches' hunts are much more severe, and in Salem, not only a few women were killed; but also the whole town was burnt with everyone inside. Three sisters are drawn together by magic, they all have run away from their abusive father and there is some bad blood between them. But soon they find togetherness again, and they want to rekindle the power of magic. But there are some bad men who hate magic, women, and especially women who are using magic and want to restart the inquisition. At least one of those evil men seems to have very powerful magical abilities himself… The book was pretty well written, but it was fairly overlong, even though it was episodic at least in the middle parts. Many things happened off-screen, several times it is said that the main protagonists hurried to a meeting with other women involved with witching, but the happenings or resolutions of those meetings were never broadcasted. The general feel of the book was very rambling, the characters endlessly discussed things. The book was vastly worse than the author's earlier novel, "The Ten Thousand Doors of January", and at times it felt like it was almost a chore to read. Also, the writing felt worse than in the earlier book by the same author.

516 pp


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