Reviews with content warning for Colonisation - The Once and Future Witches

Was anyone expecting an alternate history about witches living in 1800's New England to heavily feature class conflict, women's suffrage, queer characters, sex workers, survivors of domestic violence, racial segregation, interracial relationships, single-motherhood, and civil unrest?? Because I was expecting something much more drab and "Blair Witch Project" when I picked up this book, and boooy am I glad I was wrong!

I have a disclaimer I need to include here: I only spent 7 hours and 38 minutes on the audiobook, rather than the week or two that I would have if I'd read the 530 pages of the work. I think the pace of the book was pretty slow, even listening to it at 2.25 speed, so I imagine I would have had a much harder time staying immersed in the story if it'd taken me more than a weekend to finish.

Anyway! I really, really enjoyed the story and the diversity of the characters. As is often the case when someone throws me a bone and has a some well-developed characters that aren't white, cishetallo, rich men in the story, I was left wanting a little more diversity (more on that later), but that's me seeing someone doing a good job and just being hungry for more!

This story is very much a family saga, with all of the strengths and only a couple of the weaknesses (like the slowish pace I already mentioned). It's also a really strong drama, and one of the best examples of an epic I can think of! (I looked it up, and this is def an epic, since

1. the story centers on a hero or heroes who complete something others have only attempted; 2. the story involves superhuman feats as a main plot point; 3. the story has a setting that spans across space and time / worlds; 4. the story involves otherworldly forces, like magic; and 5. the story has highly stylized writing

As I mentioned above, I came into this story expecting the 1800s New England witches to be a story about primarily white, cisgender, heterosexual, alloromantic women and girls, and what I got was so much more! However... I did have a couple critiques. They don't really take away from the 5 stars, since this story already has so much more diversity than I expected of the genre and setting, but just wanted to include those critiques here:

I was expecting more immigrants in the story. I'm not suggesting I didn't love seeing all the things the author managed to highlight in the story, from unions to trans characters, buuut I'm about 90% sure there were more immigrants mentioned in the story than just that one woman and her six daughters, but I don't think we were even told where she was from? I guess we just didn't have a lot of speaking-time from any of the immigrants. Kind of a bummer.
Mentions are made of Native American women and of the US's violence, colonialism, and aggression with some tribes in "the West", but aside from that one shaman who laughed when she gets sprung from jail (who may have been South American, now that I think about it), we don't hear from any indigenous women at all in the story.
This is 100% better than any of the terms that starts with an "N", but the word "coloreds" was used a lot. Don't think I've seen a slavery-era / Reconstruction-era novel that does a job of this I super love, but it was hard not to notice.
Speaking of term-choices, I'm pretty sure all the sex workers are exclusively called "whores", and even the bashful / polite sister doesn't call them "prostitutes" or "working ladies" or something like that. It may just be me projecting how I feel about the word, but I was just surprised because it's the only term I remember being used when there are other options... Maybe an attempt at a reclaiming the word? Or just using the term in its strictest dictionary definition?
This last one is just because I've heard of how tangled the history of witch-persecution was irl with the history of widespread antisemitism in the US, but I was surprised there was no Jewish representation in the story. Especially because the story did such a good job of showing that magic wasn't evil and neither were witches, that magic was just what desperate women have needed to survive in a world that hates and fears women. Sooo since a lot of the propaganda around the evilness of witchery in our own world and history has been deeply antisemitic, I guess I kept waiting for the angry Jewish girl or the strong rabbi's wife to show up and also be depicted as a human and good and not any more evil than the pretty White women in the story. But this one is a pretty weak complaint, more just a character I wish had been in this story, since the author is showing us all a more human and misunderstood side of witches.

Oh, and the poetry! The nursery rhymes! The stories! I loved these so much. Every chapter was made about 30 times better with these little additions. Such a fun way to slip in some storybuilding!

Postscript:

To Any who have a Physical Copy of this Book,

Is there a secret message on the cover?????? Please advise, cannot find confirmation online and a drop of my blood on the screen did not reveal any messages.

Sincerely,
A Person much interested in the Answer

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