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A young woman living in a rigid, puritanical society discovers dark powers within herself in this stunning, feminist fantasy debut.
In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet's word is law, Immanuelle Moore's very existence is blasphemy. Her mother's union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement.
But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood.
Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.
"[A] bewitching feminist fantasy...Henderson offers a powerful portrait of patriarchal, racial, and religious abuses in Bethel society, conjuring a sense of creeping dread and maintaining the pacing throughout. This riveting work announces Henderson as an exciting new voice in dark fantasy." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Immanuelle's coming of age will keep readers glued to the page...An exciting debut with the potential to appeal to a wide range of readers and fans of titles as varied as Jennie Melamed's Gather the Daughters, Naomi Novik's Uprooted, and Scott Hawkins's The Library at Mount Char." - Library Journal
"This is a beautiful, powerful, important book, and I hugely recommend it." - Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of The Unkindest Tide
"The Year of the Witching is a dark wood ready to swallow you whole with its tense stakes and beguiling prose. Henderson takes witchcraft to its very depths, unraveling the horrific nightmares of bone-deep ideology and devastating oppression." - Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles series
"A haunting, unique read I couldn't put down—a story that cuts to the heart." - Tamora Pierce, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tempests and Slaughter
"A thrillingly brisk and bracing tale of magic and power, I loved this book. It takes the best tropes of horror and witchcraft and gives them a refreshingly feminist twist." – S.A. Chakraborty, national bestselling author of The Daevabad Trilogy
"A dark, dramatic tale of oppression and rebellion, ideology and morality, with a complicated, appealing protagonist caught in a Handmaid's Tale nightmare." - Louisa Morgan, author of The Age of Witches
This information about The Year of the Witching was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alexis Henderson is a speculative fiction writer with a penchant for dark fantasy, witchcraft, and cosmic horror. She grew up in one of America's most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, which instilled in her a life-long love of ghost stories. Currently, Alexis resides in the sun-soaked marshland of Charleston, South Carolina.
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