Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Misty (Book Rat)

Witch Child takes the form of a
diary written by Mary Nuttal (claiming to be Mary Newbury). After her
grandmother is killed for supposedly being a witch, Mary is sent to
America to assume a new identity and sever all ties with her past, ties
which may get her killed. She takes up with a colony of Puritans
traveling to the New World, and soon finds a place among them. But she
also finds herself the center of jealousies and scandals that will
raise the question of witchcraft again, making her safety in the new
world as questionable as it was in the old.

I was caught up in
this story from the very beginning. Setting aside the "convenient"
aspects of the story (the fact that the dialogue is fairly modern,
which is explained away, and the fact that she always just happens to
have access to her diary and recalls events w/ complete clarity, etc),
Mary's voice was always engaging, and she was completely relatable and
her story captivating. This is very readable. The language is simple
and flows well. Mary is an admirable girl, raised to be strong and
self-reliant, which is a dangerous thing to be as an English woman in
the mid 1600s. She is smart and self-assured, a great role model for
modern girls, but because independent women were seen as a threat, she
lives in fear of the day that her world will crumble and the people
around her turn on her.

This really brought home to me what
freaks me out about humans. The witch trials have always fascinated me,
and the truth is, Puritans freak me out. Seriously. Witch Child really
demonstrated why this is. The idea of basically condemning people to
death (in horrible, horrible ways) because of petty jealousies or to
make them fall in line is terrifying to me. They
turn on each other so quickly over everything, and it just snowballs.
That mob mentality, which is always violent and always deadly, Freaks.
Me. Out.
[Of course, this is partly because I am fairly convinced
that I would have died -- I struggle to keep my big mouth shut. Or, I
guess the problem is that I don't struggle enough.]
But
Mary is a good person, and she helps where she can. She is strong and
so, so young. But this will mean nothing if she angers the wrong
person. The sense of danger is always present, and there is a tautness
and tension to the story as a result.

There was an ambiguity to
the story that I really liked as well. Mary herself believes that she
is a witch. She never does any sort of conjuring or casts any spells,
she never actively does anything to earn the label witch. But raised in
the woods by her talented and independent grandmother, who she believes
must have had some powers, Mary believes that she, too, must have
powers in turn. Strange things do happen on occasion, but because Mary
is not some cloak-wearing, midnight-forest-traveling, familiar-petting
"witch", there is a nice ambiguity to the story where you can view Mary
how you wish. Does Mary really have some kind of power? Or is she just
a smart, capable and intuitive young girl?
There is also ambiguity
in the way the story ends, and though I was a little irritated at my
copy for having an excerpt of the sequel, Sorceress, because that ruined some of the ambiguity of the ending, it was still kind of nice to know that I can continue Mary's story.

My
advice? Pick up a copy of Witch Child and a mug of tea. This is the
perfect story for the fall season, especially if you want something more on
the human side, and less on the gore-fest side.