Let me start by saying I am nearly 40 years old, and I have never read
one
of Silver RavenWolf’s books before. I know her work is wildly popular
among
witches, especially her writings for teenagers. I am a witch, and I
collect
teenage girls’ series novels, so I had high hopes for this little book,
the first of a series about teen witches. Even though I’m not a
teenager,
I had hoped I would enjoy and resonate with the story. I am as
engrossed in
the Harry Potter series as any 11-year-old out there!
But, alas, I did not enjoy this book. I should have been able to tell from
the cover what was to come. It shows a group of five teenagers through a
window, dressed in midriff-baring street clothes, with the most glamorous
one front and center, her arms stretched out. The four others
are slouching in the background with their hands in their pockets; the young
man even has a hat on, backwards. The illustrator either has no occult
knowledge, or had no interest in portraying a witches’ coven raising energy
in an authentic manner.
And the story is not much better. The story centers around Bethany Salem
(what a nice witch name, don’t you think?), a sixteen-year-old who just lost
her boyfriend in a car accident and is determined to use her coven of five
teenagers to catch the person who killed her boyfriend. Her favorite form of
magick seems to be curses — definitely not ‘harm none, for the good of
all.’ She breaks the nose of one character in a brawl while invoking the
Dark Mother, and cuts the face of her teacher while invoking the Dark
Goddess.
There were also small details that distressed me. A male cat, her familiar,
named Hecate? Why didn’t RavenWolf pick a name befitting a male cat, rather
than name a cat after a formidable goddess? Now if Bethany should ever want
to invoke the goddess Hecate in a circle (which she doesn’t in this book),
she will have an imagery of the cat in her mind, at least at first, because
she uses the cat’s name on a daily basis. Another detail that bothered me
was the appearance of a wart on the cheek of a rather unlikeable character
who may have some occult talent of her own. So witches are warty, cruel
creatures?
I just could not get into this book, nor feel any great warmth or concern
for the characters. The teens did not seem to talk to each other in
teen-talk that felt authentic. The slang seemed dated. They didn’t
seem to interact like friends; when another of them is in a car accident,
they don’t seem to show much immediate concern, and not until six pages
later do they even explore what injuries had occurred. And there were twists
and turns to the story line that had completely unrealistic results. Someone
dies in our heroine’s bedroom while she is in there, and no one explores the
possibility of murder? It becomes known to the parents of these five that
they are practicing witchcraft, and only one of the sets of parents shows
concern? There is no punishment for brawling and breaking someone’s nose?
Unless you are a diehard Silver RavenWolf fan, I’d say skip this book. I
don’t see anything about this book that would be enjoyable for teenage
witches. If you’re looking for magickal suspense novels for teenagers, I
think Lois Duncan’s novels (“Locked in Time,” “Stranger with my Face,” and
“A Gift of Magic“, for instance), are much more authentic to a teen’s
experiences. And I adored Caroline Cooney’s time traveling series of three
books, “Out of Time,” “Both Sides of Time,” and “Prisoner of Time.” Any of
these titles will give you much more enjoyment than RavenWolf’s story.