The Age of Witches

January 20, 2020
Morgan (The Witch’s Kind) sets her robust tale of matriarchal magic in a lushly depicted Gilded Age New York. Frances Allington practices the dark magic of maleficia, driven by ambition and the desire to distance herself from her impoverished upbringing. After gaining wealth through her dark arts, she aspires to elevate herself further by arranging a match between her stepdaughter, Annis, and a poor but title-holding British aristocrat. Headstrong 17-year-old Annis largely reserves her passion for her stallion, Bit, a devotion her father, as Bit’s legal owner, uses to leverage Annis’s cooperation in Frances’s scheme. Meanwhile, Harriet Bishop, Annis’s spinster “aunt” and Frances’s cousin, works to intercede on Annis’s behalf using her lighter strain of magic. Harriet hopes both to keep Annis safe from Frances’s maleficia and to help direct Annis’s own budding powers. By alternating perspectives between the characters, Morgan manages to elicit sympathy for each member of her large cast despite their conflicting desires. Even Frances is humanized beyond the typical wicked stepmother archetype. Readers will root for these powerful women as they struggle to overcome the social limitations of their time, whether through magic or force of personality. Agent: Peter Rubie, FinePrint Literary.

February 1, 2020

The latest from Morgan (aka sf author Louise Marley) tells the tale of three women descended from Bridget Bishop, a witch hanged in Salem in 1692. In Gilded Age New York, Harriet Bishop, her cousin Frances Allington, and Frances's stepdaughter Annis Allington are all witches of varying ages and knowledge of the power. The central theme is the struggle between light and dark magic, called malefecia by Morgan. This malefecia, handed down the Bishop ancestral line, corrupts everyone who uses it. Frances uses it to evil ends by trying to force Annis into a marriage with an English duke, while Harriet and Annis work to destroy Frances's dark agenda. Morgan portrays witchcraft as freedom for the practitioners, with Harriet saying witch "should be a beautiful word" that's instead "been perverted." The author continues building mystery and intrigue with her impressive vocabulary, weaving a compelling tale of love and magic in historic America and England. Fans of Deborah Harkness's "All Souls Trilogy" or Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth will enjoy reading this. VERDICT This is a must-read for those who like magic, love, and a little bit of feel-good feminism in their historical fiction.--Kay Strahan, Univ. of Tennessee Health Sciences Lib., Memphis

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2020
In Morgan's third witch-centric historical novel, following The Witch's Kind (2019), nearly two hundred years after a woman was hanged as a witch, two of her descendants, who have followed very different paths, clash in Gilded Age New York. Annis, a young heiress, wants to breed thoroughbreds and is not interested in marriage. Her socially ambitious stepmother, Frances, married for money to fit in, but she needs more to raise her social status, and what would be better than taking Annis to London to snag a man with a title? Francis is ruthless in her use of witchcraft to manipulate others to fulfill her schemes. Her adversary is her cousin Harriet, whose intended was killed in the Civil War. Harriet lives in a beautiful apartment in the Dakota, from which she ventures into Central Park to forage for the herbs she uses as medicine and in her magic to help other women. When Annis and Frances set sail for London, Harriet is also on board, taking the battle between benevolent and foul magic to England. Morgan's beautifully conjured tale of three women, social mores, and the sanctity of self-determination is thoroughly enthralling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)