Friday, August 2, 2024

Book Review for 7.3.24: To Become a Witch

Did one piece of electronics really solve the connectivity problem? Will these book reviews post? Let's find out...

Title: To Become a Witch

Author: N.Z/ Nasser

Date: 2023

Publisher: Hanora Sky

ISBN: 978-1-915151-26-1

Quote: "[M]y sisters and I hiked the steep trail below the caves."

Three never-married sisters are frequently harassed and expect rudeness from men, in their small town in India, but their lives haven't been so terrible...until a family pet leads them into a cave where they discover powers through contact with an ancestral stone of magical power. But in this short story, we see why the series of longer stories is going to be about two sisters fighting an enemy group for the stone. One sister makes some selfish choices. Nothing so terrible that, in real life, she couldn't choose differently tomorrow--but magical realms don't always offer as much hope as real life does.

None of them is or will be a witch in the sense that Britain and its Colonies once used that word as a criminal charge. Their culture is different. They don't have the Old British Religion to practice nor the Christian judgment that the Old British Religion was satanic. What they're doing is pretty transparently a metaphor for claiming their legitimate property and power as older women in their own Indian culture. That kind of behavior gets labelled "witchy" and "crazy" there, too. In the Indian fantasy kingdom, it's not even labelled; it's attacked by armed troops.  

Are small acts of selfishness all that dangerous? How much do you want to know about this fantasy series, or the reality from which it grew?

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