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Book Summary and Reviews of Awakened by A.E. Osworth

Awakened by A.E. Osworth

Awakened

by A.E. Osworth

  • Publishes:
  • Apr 29, 2025, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A coven of trans witches battles an evil AI in the magical coming-of-middle-age romp about love, loss, drag shows, and late capitalism. ​

On a morning much like any other, 30-something queer Brooklynite Wilder makes the miraculous discovery: suddenly, as if by magic, they can understand every language in the world. Dazed and disconnected, Wilder is found and taken in by a small coven of trans witches who have all become Awakened with mystical powers of their own. Quibble, a handsome portal traveler, Artemis, the group's caretaker and seer, and Mary Margaret, a smart-ass teen with telekinetic powers all work to make the cagey and suspicious Wilder feel comfortable, both within their group and with the knowledge that magic is, in fact, real.

Just as Wilder is finding their footing, a malicious AI threatens to dismantle the delicate balance of the coven and the world as they know it. Newly assembled and tenuously bound, the group scrambles to stay united as they parse the difference between difficult and dangerous, asking themselves continuously: is any consciousness—be it artificial, material, or magical—too dangerous to exist?

Awakened is an exhilarating, hilarious and thought-provoking reflection on the ways that we are responsible for creating our own realities , a story of finding community, and a meditation on what it means to have a body (and if it might be far worse never to have had one at all).

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Reviews

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This information about Awakened 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.

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More Information

A.E. Osworth is a transgender novelist. Their debut, We Are Watching Eliza Bright, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and was long listed for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and The Tournament of Books. They are a lecturer at University of British Columbia's School of Creative Writing where they teach fiction, interactive fiction, and new media.

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