“In the town live witches nine: three in worsted, three in rags, and three in velvet fine...”

This was one of my favorite books in middle-school for various reasons that I seemed to forget before picking it up last night. I suppose I'll warn you right away: this is a fast book. If you are a seasoned reader like me you could tear through this in about- perhaps- two hours if you don't take many breaks. The writing flows so well. On the other hand- it's not distancing in the way so historical fiction it is- the main character, Mary, is simply a woman of few words and Rees lets her speak in her strange, cold way.

"Maybe it was the sea glittering beneath him, but his eyes seemed full of coins."

So what makes this book so good? Well, I think I can remember. This book is so immersive- all these details from vocabulary to clothing to food- you can't help but feel like you have time traveled 400 years into the past. This is a frightening time, however, and I couldn't help but feel a little bit scared of the dark in 2015 after I finished.

I also appreciated how Celia Rees highlighted the good and bad of Puritan culture- on one hand, you have a group of people that seek to live peaceful, pious lives without persecution- and on the other, you can see how religious zeal and corrupt power dynamics can do more harm than good. I also appreciated how Celia Rees highlighted native-american culture- that, no- the indigenous people were not one "people" that they had different languages, cultures, etc. from each other.

“Lies are not rooted in the mind in the way truth is.”

The only criticism I can give- if there is any to give at all, is that the novel felt incomplete. This is half the story- Witch Child is a duology. I thought this was unnecessary for many reasons. The magic, characters, etc.- nothing was resolved when it certainly could have been- It was almost as if the 1st act had just finished when the book came to a close.