A review by rachelfaye
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

5.0

The book version of the saying “The didn’t burn witches; they burned women.” Might be my new favorite book in the entire world. Figurative language used in the most empowering of ways. Reads like literary fiction, fairytale, magical realism, partial historical fiction of the women’s suffrage movement, feminist fiction, all with a backbone made of the magic of women and sisterhood. How I could want to live in a world of such horrors, but somehow I wanted to be swallowed into it because of Harrow’s writing and the power she gives her female characters. I feel so indebted to the women who fought for us long before we were born, willfully walking into incredible physical and emotional suffering so that a better world for their granddaughter’s daughters might one day find them. Especially to those doubly and triply targeted and taken for granted, black and brown and indigenous and immigrant women, sapphic women, trans and nonbinary women who fight the hardest yet benefit from the fruits of their labor decades and centuries after the rest, but fight anyways.