Witches of Fawsetwood

(Nimue, review)

I read this book quite a while ago because I know Dorothy through Moon Books and she approached me to see if I’d be willing to write an endorsement for her witchcraft novel. I absolutely was, and this is the text I gave her:

“This is a rich, deep, slow read of a novel that really draws you into the lives of the characters. It achieves something truly unusual in that it sets a practice much like modern witchcraft in a historical setting and makes that feel plausible and authentic.”

I want to expand on that here. Dorothy has pulled off something I find genuinely impressive. I’ve read a fair few novels (or at least the first few chapters of them) that position modern witchcraft sensibilities and practices in historical contexts. I have otherwise usually hated this kind of book, I’ve often declined to finish them, and generally found them to be horrible and annoying.

This book was an absolute exception. I found it persuasive and I very much enjoyed reading it.

Usually the problem with this kind of novel is that the author only knows about modern witchcraft and just assumes that was what people did in the past. Dorothy has a depth of understanding around both the history and the folk traditions to be able to do something entirely different. She’s also not got people able to use magic to solve their every problem, and she’s realistic about the kinds of problems people used to try and fix with magic. I very much liked that.

Here we have witchcraft as the survival of pre-Christian Pagan practice, presented as though these are the roots of modern witchcraft. While I was reading I found it easy to suspend my disbelief and go along with the story. Let me tell you that given how much disbelief I had to suspend in the first place, this is no small achievement. She makes the witchcraft work in a way I have never seen before.

If you’re into witchcraft novels then you’re going to enjoy this, simply. It doesn’t really fit with my understanding of historical witchcraft at all, and I was entirely fine with that, because the story was interesting, I was intrigued by it, and the writing was good.