The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow

In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the Eastwood sisters–James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna–join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.

Where to begin with Alix Harrow?

Like a lot of people anticipating this book, I loved the Ten Thousand Doors of January. The writing seemed so beautiful to me. It had this awe-inspiring sense of wonder. Of an infinite, unknowable world just beyond the boundaries of the pages. It captured my imagination utterly, in a way that few books do.

Basically, The Once and Future Witches had a lot to live up to.

So, did it live up to my expectations? Well… aye. Too fucking right it did.

I’ve got to admit, at the beginning I was a little anxious and skeptical. When I read this, I was going through a phase where I was finding it difficult to immerse myself in a book. So it’s difficult for me to separate my frame of mind from my enjoyment of the first few chapters. But regardless of the cause, the first six or so chapters went by quite slowly for me. It was something of a gradual introduction to each of the three sisters. The beginning tiptoed around their relationship and their shared past in a way that felt slightly frustrating initially, but paid dividends when these things were confronted later in the book.

By the 20% mark, I was hooked. I was invested in these sisters, in this family. I shared their anger. I shared their sense of injustice. I was furious at the way the people around them, and the world as a whole, had treated them. They deserved better. They deserved a better future for women. No, not a future, a better present. They deserved — had earned — the right to have power over their own lives.

They deserved the return of witchcraft.

Now, look. This is usually the point in the review where I break things up into sections. A paragraph each for my thoughts on the plot, the world, the characters. Well, here I don’t really think I can do that. They were all so beautifully intertwined. Their world is unjust, just like ours is. Their goal is to change that, and it’s in the process of working towards that goal that I got to know (and care for) the characters.

There’s so much to love about this book. The prose, of course, is beautiful. It still invokes wonder, though not quite as unbridled as in The Ten Thousand Doors — here the wonder is tempered by an underlying anger. But with all the differences between the two books, Harrow’s love of story still shines through. Witch spells are passed down through the generations in secret, via folk rhymes and fairy tales. And in doing so, Harrow presents witchcraft as something truly magical, as she has already established stories as a magic of their own in her last book. All negative connotations associated with “witchcraft” and related terms are soundly rejected.

Then, having established witchcraft as something wondrous, Harrow ties it into the women’s movement. And it just makes so much sense. Of course women’s magic is a force for progress, equality, and the wider good. Of course. How did anyone ever think otherwise?

But it’s the nuances that really caught my attention. In the Once and Future Witches, witchcraft and womanhood aren’t solely reserved for those who were born with fair skin and ownership of (and preference for) a specific set of equipment. The women’s movement in this book makes a point of being inclusive, and hammers home that victory can not be won without the vital contributions of all.

But of course, the fight for women’s rights isn’t the end. There are other forms of prejudice that exist. Racism is one of these, and I should warn any readers of colour that loaded terms like “coloured” are used throughout this novel. This seems to have been a conscious decision, as though to say, “look, women’s rights are one thing, but can we really stop to celebrate when racist terms like this are still so commonplace?”. Whether this is well-handled or not is not for me to decide, but in the event that this is a potentially harmful topic for anyone who reads this review to confront, I thought it worth mentioning.

It may have taken me some time to immerse myself in this story, but once I did, I didn’t want to leave. The Once and Future Witches is in my opinion another outstanding book from Alix Harrow, and I encourage anyone interested to grab it as soon as they can.

I received an advanced paperback of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Orbit UK for the review copy!