Friday, April 20, 2018

The Silver Witch


The Silver Witch, Paula Brackston, 308 pages

Tilda Fordwells has just moved to the Welsh lakeside cottage of her dreams, but her husband Mat isn’t there to share it with her – he recently died in a car accident. She lives there peacefully, running every day, rescuing a hound, dealing with her fritzy electricity, and creating ceramic art. But as an archaeological dig by the lake progresses, Tilda realizes she can do magic – and an evil force from a thousand years ago is beginning to stir.

I was disappointed by this book. The pacing was not great, and the flashback chapters (to the pre-medieval Celtic settlement in the location, where a witch deals with political intrigue) felt not fleshed out, like they were there merely to buttress the main plot. I never got a real sense of place from the book, which is surprising because the author is actually from the area it’s set in. I was hoping for something more like Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series, which is deeply rooted in British folklore, but The Silver Witch never quite reaches the peak it attains to.

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