Tag: witchcraft

Which Witch?

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Ibbotson, Eva. Which Witch. Apple Paperback, 1979.

Reason read: I am not really sure what I meant by this. I put Which Witch in the category of “Tequila Month” (???).

Imagine being new parents and realizing your darling baby boy is not normal. He was actually born a wizard. George became Arriman Canker and he grew up a solitary dark magic maker. When it came time for Arriman to finally find a wife he decided to hold a contest the week of Halloween. Which witch would make the perfect mate? Only a competition could tell him the true dark witch for him. He wanted a witch who could create the most vile, the darkest, the most powerful and evil magic imaginable. Meet the witches vying for Arriman’s hand in marriage:
Mabel Wrack, the sea witch. Her familiar is an octopus. Her magic for the competition was to raise the Kraken and my favorite magic of the whole lot.
Ethel Feedbag, the country witch with the pig as her familiar.
Nancy and Nora Shouter, twin witches with chickens. Their magic
Mother Bloodwort who occasionally turns herself into inanimate objects and then cannot remember how to change herself back.
Madame Olympia, with an aardvark as a familiar. Her magic for the competition was the most impressive. She created a Symphony of Death Performed by a Cast of Thousands.
Belladonna, a young witch with no familiar.
Needless to say, the competition does not go as planned but Arriman finds a wife and they all live happily ever after…sort of.

Here is something new I learned about magic: milk is the antidote to a spell.

Monalot (her real name was Gwendolyn Swamp). Her familiar is a sheep. She couldn’t compete because she got sick.

Author fact: Ibottson has written a ton of stuff for children. This is the only book I am reading for the Challenge.

Book trivia: My copy of Which Witch was illustrated by Annabel Large.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Not Only for Kids: Fantasies for Grown-Ups” (p 175). It should be of note that Which Witch is the last book in this chapter.

Magic Circle

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Napoli, Donna Jo. The Magic Circle. Puffin Books, 1993.

Reason read: I read somewhere that August is National Fantasy Month. I have no idea if that is true.

This is the retelling of Hansel and Gretel from the viewpoint of the wicked witch. She is simply called Ugly One in Magic Circle. She may be ugly but Napoli wants you to think she has a good heart. Ugly One starts off as a loving single parent to a daughter named Asa and works as a healer blessed with magic powers. She is able to bring sick people back to health and dangerous pregnancies back from the brink of death. Her reputation as a sorceress borders on evil because with great powers comes temptations and an easy fall from grace. When the Ugly One starts accumulating gems and jewels as payment for her services, greed sets in. All she can see is her daughter clothed in wealth; “diamonds on the soles of her shoes.” Blinded by a gem, she makes a deal with the devil and her fate is at once sealed. She becomes a true witch who cannot bleed or cry; banished to live in the deep woods as a hermit and destine to eat small children. Enter Hansel and Gretel. Are they Asa’s children?
As an aside, the number nine seems to be important. Peter reads to the Ugly One for nine years and the Ugly One lives alone in her sugar cottage for nine years before Hansel and Gretel come along. I am sure there is religious significance with the number nine.
As another aside, the character of Bala reminded me of Iago. I never knew if I could trust her even though the Ugly One called her a friend.

Line I liked, “Forgiveness is a little thing when love is there” (p 114).

Author fact: I have four books by Donna Jo Napoli on my Challenge list. I have already read Spinners, Crazy Jack and now The Magic Circle. All that is left is Zel.

Book trivia: The Magic Circle is short – less than 200 pages long.

Nancy said: Pearl said The Magic Circle is a good read for teenage girls.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Fractured Fairytales” (p 93).

Face the Fire

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Roberts, Nora. Face the Fire. Jove Books, 2002.

Reason read: to finished the trilogy started in February in honor of Valentine’s Day and love and romance and cheesy chick lit.

To recap the trilogy: Nell came to Three Sisters Island, off the coast of Massachusetts, looking to escape an abusive husband (a la Sleeping with the Enemy). She found a sisterhood of witches with Ripley and Mia and true love with Ripley’s brother. In the second installment, Ripley, the witch with the biggest chip on her shoulder needed to chill out. She found true love with a witch researcher. In Face the Fire, it is Mia’s turn to find her true love. The only problem is, her true love is someone who walked away from her many years ago, leaving deep scars and a toughened exterior. While I appreciated the fact Mia’s story ran through the earlier installments, I was disappointment when she decided she could have a sexual relationship with long lost love, Sam. Like the other plots in the Three Sisters Island trilogy, there is an element of evil that must be vanquished before anyone can live happily ever after.

Book trivia: Face the Fire is the last book in the trilogy.

Playlist: “Sea of Love” and Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.”

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say much about Face the Fire except it was out of chronological order in Book Lust.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love is Here to Stay” (p 203).

Dance Upon the Air

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Roberts, Nora. Dance Upon the Air. Jove, 2001.

Reason read: Valentine’s Day is in February. Read Dance Upon the Air in honor of love.

I always read romance novels with a grain of smirk. I can get easily irritated by fluffy characters and airy dialogue. For example, Dance Upon the Air: who hires a complete stranger at first sight, lends them money, gives them a house, and puts them in charge of a business inside a ten minute conversation? A witch, that’s who. Of course. Having another character point out this generosity weirdness doesn’t make it any more believable until you remind yourself (again) that Mia Devlin is a witch and she’s totally comfortable giving a stranger control of her bookstore bakery. She more than knows what she’s doing when stranger “Nell” shows up in her bakery and announces she knows how to bake, run a business, and charm the socks off everyone she meets.
Nell is on the run. But, this is a romance novel so of course there is the hunky (and very single, of course) sheriff of the island who knows Nell is not Nell. However, he’s sexually attracted to her (of course he is) so he’s not about to scare her off with his suspicions. There needs to be the overly tough, slightly rebellious sister who is, by the way, a cop (of course she is).
In a nutshell: strange woman shows up on a small island where everyone will talk. She’s hiding out from an abusive husband who thinks she’s dead. She is so charming that by the time deadly hubby figures out where she is, the entire island is behind her. The plotline of Dance Upon the Air totally reminded me of the movie Sleeping with the Enemy, but I would have to think there are hundreds of victim-runs-away-from-abuser-to-start-a-new-life stories out there. Don’t forget the witches.

Author fact: Roberts has at least three pennames.

Book trivia: Dance Upon the Air is the first book in the Three Sisters trilogy. I am reading all three for the Challenge.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about the Three sisters Island trilogy except to list the three books. More on that later.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love is Here to Stay” (p ). Again! I am always irritated with myself when I don’t do the homework before starting a series. Pearl lists the books in the trilogy out of chronological order. Of course she lists the last title of the series first. Like a blind sheep, I borrowed the last book first. Bah, bah.

Warding of Witch World

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Norton, Andre. The Warding of Witch World. New York: Warner Books, 1996.

Reason read: to continue the series started in April to honor Norton’s memory. She passed in the month of April.

From everything that I can tell, The Warding of Witch World is the final entry in the Witch World series. It is Book Six of the Turning Series. The premise is pretty simple, all the witches come together, future allies and past enemies must bond together to face impending doom. All of the gates of their Witch World are open and evil is about to descend upon them. The title of the book comes from the warding and watching of these gates. A robust cast of creatures, including a giant, come together for the battle of their lives.

I pretty much gave up on this book before it even began.

Author fact: Andre Norton is the pseudonym for Alice Mary Norton.

Book trivia: The Warding of Witch World is a hefty read, totaling 560 pages.

Nancy said: nothing.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy” (p 216).

Marching Out

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March was one of those weird months. A few Nor’Easters. A few miles run. A few books read. We had two school closings in back to back weeks so that helped with the reading, but not the run. I finished the St. Patrick’s Day Road Race just two minutes off my time last year. Considering I didn’t train (again) I’m alright with that. There’s always next year! Here are the books:

Fiction –

  • The Good Son by Michael Gruber
  • Roman Blood by Steven Saylor
  • White Man’s Grave by Richard Dooling
  • Witch World by Andre Norton
  • Cards of Identity by Nigel Dennis

Nonfiction –

  • All the Way Home by David Giffels
  • Slide Rule by Nevil Shute

Series Continuations –

  • Coast of Incense by Freya Stark – to finished the series started in honor of her birth month in January.
  • Entranced by Nora Roberts

Early Review for Librarything –

  • Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt (started)
  • Infinite Hope – Anthony Graves

Poetry –

  • New and Collected Poetry by Czeslaw Milosz (not finished)

Fun – I’m not finished with either fun book so I won’t list them here.

White Man’s Grave

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Dooling, Richard. White Man’s Grave. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.

Reason read: this explanation is a little convoluted: Dooling was born in Nebraska. Nebraska became a state in March. Nebraska has nothing to do with the plot of White Man’s Grave.

When Peace Corps Volunteer Michael Killigan goes missing the people in his life react very differently. His father, Randall, a high powered bankruptcy lawyer, throws money and power at the situation, hoping he doesn’t have to get his hands too dirty with his son’s failings.  Meanwhile, best friend, Boone Westfall, does the exact opposite. He throws himself headlong into the West African world of witch doctors and supernatural voodoo. Interestingly enough, the voodoo comes to Indiana. Randall receives a strange package; a bundle of black rags soaked in what looks like human blood. And that’s when the hallucinations start. Meanwhile, across the world the Liberian rebels are taking over Sierra Leone, corruption is leaking out from every corner. Secret societies of leopard men, bush devils, human baboons and witches prevail. In the midst of it all one question still remains, what happened to Peace Corps volunteer Michael Killigan?

Confessional: I got a little weary of the repetitive descriptions of gory witchcraft. Everything was matted in hair and blood and teeth.

Two quotes to quote: “His wife was terribly calm, almost formal, which told him something was terribly wrong, and she didn’t want to tell him on the phone, because she was afraid he would lean out of the clouds on Olympus and throw lightning bolts at her” (p 18), and “Randall held his breath and mastered a rogue emotion, which threatened to bolt from his stables and make an ass of him” (p 242).

Author fact: The photo Dooling used looks a little like Matt Damon. Another Dooling trivia: he lived in Sierra Leone in the early 1980s.

Book trivia: The cover of my edition of White Man’s Grave is creepy. A baboon with bleary eyes stares out from on top of a man’s muddied torso. The man is holding a bowl of bones and a picture of a man. Underneath the man’s torso are bare legs, one wearing a sneaker, the other barefoot. None of these images are proportional to the other so the overall effect is very disjointed and disturbing.

Nancy said: Nancy includes White Man’s Grave because it is one of two satirical novels about the culture clash in Africa.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “African Colonialism” (p 14). As an aside, this is the first book I am reading from this chapter. Isn’t it amazing? After almost 18 years of reading I finally chose a book from “African Colonialism.”