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A LETTER TO THREE WITCHES

Name: A LETTER TO THREE WITCHES
Author: Elizabeth Bass
ISBN: 978-1-4967-3432-7

by Elizabeth Bass ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2022

A lighthearted supernatural romp.

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What happens when a family of witches is forced to suppress their powers?

Gwen Engel is a witch. Well, sort of. Decades ago, the Grand Council of Witches banned her family from practicing witchcraft—all because her great-great-grandfather accidentally started a little something called the Dust Bowl. The name of Gwen’s upstate New York business, Abracadabra Odd Job Service, is the only vestige of her magical heritage. That is, until she and her cousins Milo and Trudy receive a letter from Tannith, Gwen’s distant cousin and adoptive sister. Tannith, who spends her days talking with her cat familiar and spying on her family, informs her cousins that she's moving to New York City and taking one of their boyfriends, whom she's enchanted, with her. Whose boyfriend, you might ask? Well, that’s left up to the cousins to figure out. After receiving this life-altering letter, the supernatural abilities inherent in each cousin start to spill out, and magical mayhem unfolds: “Trained or not, we were all witches. Stifle a talent too long, and it was bound to exhibit itself one way or another.” Filling her book with talking animals, toad transmogrification, and love spells, Bass leans heavily into the cliché. Lacking any worldbuilding except for Witchbook, Cackle, eCharmed, and BrewTube, the cringingly named websites for witches, the novel teeters between trite and amusing and is ultimately saved by some surprising twists and the cousins’ enjoyable banter.

A lighthearted supernatural romp.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-4967-3432-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021

Categories:

PARANORMAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN

by Jacqueline Harpman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1997

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I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').

Pub Date: May 1, 1997

ISBN: 1-888363-43-6

Page Count: 224

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ORLANDA
by Jacqueline Harpman & translated by Ros Schwartz

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THE DARK MIRROR

From the Bone Season series , Vol. 5

by Samantha Shannon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 25, 2025

Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.

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In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.

After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.

Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.