The Once and Future Witches

Witches speaks eloquently, fiercely, and passionately to anyone who is seething with quiet and desperate fury, feeling lost and powerless in a world controlled by self-absorbed men who wield their corrupt version of “truth” like a weapon. It’s not just a story…it’s a paean, a prophecy, a polemic. It doesn’t tell a tale; it tattoos it on your soul. It’s about the absolute and terrifying joy of trust and faith, the unrelenting ferocity of love, and the implacable will anyone who’s ever been dismissed can wield when given even the faintest spark of inspiration and hope. Oh, and it also… show more.

Did I mention that I am a sucker for alternative histories? This one takes place in a nineteenth-century America where both witchcraft and women’s rights are ruthlessly suppressed, but three sisters, all witches, are working to revive magic by tracking down forgotten spells. I found this novel much scarier than many fantasy novels because, well, the authorities’ efforts to keep women in line felt all too true to life. The relationships among the sisters are thorny, warm, and satisfyingly complex, and Alix Harrow’s rich, evocative language makes their magic powerfully real.

I here reluctantly admit that I only recently began reading speculative fiction (thanks to a collaboration with my friend and colleague Amy Johnson). The Once and Future Witches is at once historical and speculative. Harrow weaves the story of three sisters named Agnes Amaranth, Beatrice Belladonna, and James Juniper together with the American women's suffrage movement and witchcraft simultaneously familiar yet reimagined. It is a magnificent story, but it’s also a thoughtful meditation on gender, race, and what different kinds of power look like, especially when considered from new perspectives. I simultaneously couldn’t stop reading and didn’t want it to… show more.

Witches, feminism, race relations, sapphic love, the power of words—this book has all of it and lit a passionate, delighted, mischievous, and poignant flame in me. Harrow’s writing is lovely and magical, like a spell itself, while unfolding a twisty tale of three sisters who find themselves representing the hallowed pagan triad of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. The story is set in an alternate-history world of New Salem, USA, in the late 1800s, and I loved the little world-building details differentiating this world from ours. Wait till you hear what happened to OLD Salem…(*shiver*).