2.5/5

I really, really wanted to like this book more than I did, but-- like Dreadnought --I think its core audience was not me. The author is a trans woman, and the main conflict in the book revolves around whether a trans girl can count as a female witch or not. The heros and villains line up entirely according to whether they are terfy or not-terfy, and the conversations around the main conflict recapitulate all the conversations that have been happening on twitter over the last five years as JK Rowling decided to make terfiness trendy, without adding anything to it, or even changing any of the arguments to fit them into this world with apparenty gender-binary based magic. For example: Witches and warlocks traditionall align with gender binaries, but witches tend to be stronger. Some witches hypothesize that there might be a genetic component to 'Gaia's gift', as they call magic. But this falls apart when you consider trans witches, whose power levels align more with cis witches than with cis warlocks. So it seems that Gaia's gift is not based on genetics (or gender assigned at birth), but something else. Cool. What is it? Is it purely identity? What happens with a gender-fluid magic user? Do their powers wane on days when they feel more masculine and wax when they feel more feminine? The fact that the difference in magical strength is more a tendency than an absolute seems to resemble the differences in height and strength that align with mundane gender binary physical traits, but if it aligns with trans people's true identities, then the parallel breaks down. I felt annoyed and irritated by the lack of exploration of the ways that magic-gender alignments in the book could be extended beyond real-world identity politics, enriching and expanding the world-building. Instead, it felt like it was too glued to the real world struggles, and never let the primary conceit breathe on its own.

This too-rigid adherence to real-world culture wars also has consequences for characterization. Without in any way wanting to take away from the importance of recognizing that trans women are women, and the importance of combatting terfs, I just don't think 'she's a terf' is a satisfying villain motivation.

Helena was introduced as a real character with agency and history and her own internal complexity, so having her turn into a villain halfway through purely on the basis of 'she's a terf' felt lazy. It's the new 'kick the puppy': how do we signal this person is a baddie? You can trace this approach throughout cultural history: 1950: He's a nazi! 1960: He's a communist! 1970:He's a misogynist! 1980: He's a white supremecist! 2000s: He's a homophobe! 2020s: She's a terf! (#feminism: at least women get to be primary villains these days.) In this book, terfery is all that is needed to classify our villain as a villain, so the need for further development or depth or characterization is entirely dropped. Helena's character becomes shallower, her family history and cultural and political connections to the magical world fade into insignficance.

All that remains to motivate her is terfiness, and so all the scenes from her point of view added nothing to the story. If we're going to get plot from the villain's perspective, I'd like that perspective to be more interesting than 'rawr i hate trans girls i evil now'. She becomes less menacing; more petty; and her eventual downfall seems boring because of it. 

To be sure, I speak from the position of someone who has never suffered from transphobia, and I imagine watching

Helena

get what's coming to her would be much more satisfying and cathartic for people who have. That's why I say this book's core audience is not me. And if that's the kind of thing you're here for, then this book will probably be great! Because, aside from the fight-the-terfs plotline that didn't land for me, the rest of this book is very engaging. It does a great job with world-building and culture building. It managed to convey the temporal setting -- the medium-term aftermath of a catastrophic magical war -- without leaving me feeling like a much more interesting story had happened before the book began. I also rather enjoyed the structure of the plot: it could easily have been a YA-type story, centering as it does around a traumatized teenager who is possibly the world-ender of prophesy, becoming best friends with another teenager who has only just discovered that she's a witch. And yet what we get is that same story told solely the perspective of the adults, who have a much more nuanced understanding of how the magical world works, what caused the war, what remains undone, and where the friction points still are. 

This depth of history worked well for personal and political characterization too (aside from Helena). On the personal side, we have a really skilled portrayal of the complexity of childhood friendships and enforced closeness that change as people grow into their adult selves. This worked especially well as we saw how Elle interacted with Niamh and Leonie, and how she approached her relationship with her husband. On the political side, the book does a great job capturing the complexity of ingrained civil service bureaucracy of Her Majesty's Royal Coven and the sloppiness of nascent alternative organizations that try to fill in the gaps that institutions are too slow and conservative to address. And I loved the description of the town of Hebden Bridge, which seems to have been created to push all of my buttons for idyllic places to live.

So: for people who want to see the anti-terf struggle structuring their fantasy plots to satisfying and cathartic effect, this book will be terrific. For people who get a little restless when the real world struggles are transported a little too directly into their fiction, eh.