Book Review: Hallowed Bones

Title: Hallowed Bones

Author: Lucy Smoke

Date: 2026

Publisher: St Martin's

ISBN: 978-1-250-41375-8 (e-book)

Quote:  "May your feral independence burn bright enough to be historically inconvenient."

"Lucy Smoke" sounds like a woman's name but this book was really written by a man--even if a woman typed the actual words. You know it because, even though the premise of the story accepts the modern "TV witch universe" rule that really good witches have to be female and hereditary magical powers go bad if inherited by men, even though the "Sons of Salem" are considered unlucky and shunned by other covens of "real" witches in Salem and Ipswich, still...

1. Most of the action in this book (volume one of a series) consists of one girl being taught about who she is and what she's inherited by four boys, all just slightly older than she is.

2. She's the one whose "untrained," unsuspected magic powers have attracted the bad luck, including the fire in which her parents died and undescribed disasters that got her expelled from high schools. (The book doesn't explain why she has black hair with a dramatic white streak, and the reason probably does have something to do with Tulsi Gabbard on television having reminded the writer of fictional TV characters with streaked hair, but in reality, when young people have a white streak or spot, the white hair is probably growing through scar tissue. This fun fact may or may not contribute anything to the back-story later in the series.)

3. Her value to the coven is explained to her in terms of having babies.

4. The mystical initiation where she claims her role as witch priestess, the climax of the story, does not involve facing her monsters or the emotions on which they feed. It involves her having very explicit, consensual though rougher than really Highly Sensory-Perceptive people would be likely to like, sex with one of the four boys, in the way that makes babies. 

5. Because, after all, this girl has no plans for a future life; she's too young to be in college, is there just because no relative wants the risk of living with the bad luck she attracts, has no career in mind, so she might as well just get pregnant and drop out anyway, riiiight, baaaby?

Here I stand to testify that, although students who've got into college while everyone else their age is in high school may be confused about their futures, may lack goals, may be really looking for time and space to find out what they want out of life, what they want is probably not premature parenthood. I was that kind of college freshman and I know. 

So this is not a story about "TV witch" initiation as a metaphor for female empowerment. At its core it's anti-girl. Actually the male fantasy at its core isn't really empowering for guys either. I don't think reading it will harm adults, although the sex is explicit enough and the things described happening to people who have not done anything bad are gruesome enough that I would rule this book out of consideration for school libraries. (Knowing that that will make some teenagers want to buy it...but other teenagers won't want to look at it, and shouldn't have to.) 

Anyway: Alexander Hartwell, one of the previous generation of the all-male "Sons of Salem" coven, was pushed away from the coven because his powers threatened a senior male. He tried to live a magic-free life with no reminders of witchcraft. The result is that his daughter's growing up as an "untrained" witch whose powers have been seen as something like a poltergeist effect, but also include giving her nightmares and attracting horrible monsters that attack her. Or they attack other people, including Haven's roommate's boyfriend, whom Haven neither dislikes nor covets, and some adults from town Haven's never even met. They're real; their bites draw blood and leave an infection that makes even Haven delirious. The bodies of townsfolk keep being found in horrific conditions. It seems to the five students and the one surviving elder in the "Sons of Salem" that Haven's initiation as a witch priestess will solve the problem. Well, maybe, but because this is a series, things are likely to get worse before they get better.

There are certainly worse fantasies about psychic "witches" Out There. There are also better ones.