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The Black Witch Chronicles #1
by Laurie Forest
Book Reviewed by:A new Black Witch will rise…her powers vast beyond imagining.
Elloren Gardner is the granddaughter of the last prophesied Black Witch, Carnissa Gardner, who drove back the enemy forces and saved the Gardnerian people during the Realm War. But while she is the absolute spitting image of her famous grandmother, Elloren is utterly devoid of power in a society that prizes magical ability above all else.
When she is granted the opportunity to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an apothecary, Elloren joins her brothers at the prestigious Verpax University to embrace a destiny of her own, free from the shadow of her grandmother's legacy. But she soon realizes that the university, which admits all manner of people—including the fire-wielding, winged Icarals, the sworn enemies of all Gardnerians—is a treacherous place for the granddaughter of the Black Witch.
As evil looms on the horizon and the pressure to live up to her heritage builds, everything Elloren thought she knew will be challenged and torn away. Her best hope of survival may be among the most unlikely band of misfits…if only she can find the courage to trust those she's been taught to hate and fear.
The writing in The Black Witch is solid, the fantasy is developed, the world is immersive, and the characters are not flat – though some are emblematic. That being said, fantasy worlds constructed for young adult/adult crossover audiences are not in short supply, nor are those fantasy worlds that use the constructed world to provide a critique of and reflection on myriad social problems. A world like this, a story like this, will ultimately be put up against the worldbuilding of authors such as Tamora Piece, Robin McKinley, and Ursula K. LeGuin, to name a few. While those authors have done a better job of this kind of social critique through fantasy, this should not demerit The Black Witch in and of itself either, as it speaks very much to the contemporary reality within which it was published...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Michelle Anya Anjirbag).
Ask me with a gun to my head if I believe in them, all the gods and myths that I write about, and I'd have to say no. Not literally. Not in the daylight, nor in well-lit places, with people about. But I believe in the stories we can tell with them. I believe in the reflections that they show us when they are told. And forget it or ignore it at your peril, it remains true: these stories have power.
- Neil Gaiman, from Reflections on Myth
It is through fantasy that we have always sought to make sense of the world, not through reason…It is through the fictive projections of our imaginations based on personal experience that we have sought to grasp, explain, alter, and comment on reality. This is again why such staples as the...
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