This review contains spoilers. I received a review copy of this book via Waterstones.
I had high expectations of this book. As a Deb Harkness fan (have you been watching A Discovery of Witches? If not WHY NOT), the title and pretty cover were enough to lure me in. It's a well documented fact that I can't resist books with 'witch' in the title. However, I was sadly disappointed.
The premise is that the reader follows successive generations of women in the Orchiere family, from their roots in rural Brittany in the early 1800s all the way to London in the Second World War. Descended from Romani gypsies, the Orchiere women have the power to perform witchcraft using herbs and their precious crystal, which is a sort of scrying stone. Whilst the opening scene was pretty compelling, with the then-matriarch Ursule performing some dramatic and exciting magic, unfortunately I found her descendents' powers a bit wanting.
Nanette's chapter was too long, the potentially interesting angle of whether she carried the family's magical blood overshadowed by a crowd of ill-defined family members I couldn't keep straight in my head. Plus, the only magic she ever truly performed was to bring herself a man and get pregnant.
It seems that the purpose of the Orchiere women's lives is to use their magical powers just once: to conjure up a sexy man, and then conceive the next witch in the line. I understand that for the purposes of plot, each generation would have to produce the next, but it felt like very little else happened in their lives apart from this act of passing on the magic. What's the point of passing it on if the daughter is not going to do anything more exciting than use it to have another daughter? The difficulties faced by women in eras gone by are an important inclusion, but I felt the point was over-laboured somewhat.
Thankfully, this did wear off as the book went on. I found the earlier chapters rather long and dull, each historical period muddily defined, but once I got to the fourth section I found a heroine I could root for. Morwen was spirited and adventurous, and seemed a lot more fleshed out than her predecessors - kind of like a Welsh, early 20th century Merida, riding about on her shire horse and refusing to submit to an arranged marriage. She and her daughter Veronica, who ends up using magic to help the Allies in World War II, were so much more interesting, and also bucked the trend of simply becoming pregnant with little other drama. I also had a lot of love for the character of Jago who appeared in the last three sections - he was such a gem!
Ultimately I just wanted more from this book: more historical detail, more character development, more magic, more eventful lives, more generations! Veronica's struggle to have children seemed an odd cliffhanger on which to leave a book which had been almost solely about passing on a bloodline. Especially as she doesn't use magic after the war. For most of the Orchieres it's as if the magic is only there to conjur men and conceive, and once that's not needed, it's put away until the daughter comes of age. Personally, I would've loved an epilogue in which we see a present-day Orchiere girl, cleaning out the attic of the crumbling family home, only to come across the crystal - with perhaps a note from Veronica hoping that one day it might fall into the hands of someone who needs it. Maybe I like resolution too much: maybe Veronica's difficulties with having children is the right ending, the only way to break the maternal cycle of seemingly losing power after reproducing.
Since I enjoyed 2/5 of the sections, and was genuinely touched by one character death, I'm going to give this book 2.5 stars. It had potential, but lacked the Harkness-style attention to fine detail that would have made the most of the historical plotline.
Oh - and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get over casting the Queen Mother as a witch...!
My rating: 2.5 stars