Why The Once And Future Witches Belongs On Your Reading List
Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches is a richly imagined historical fantasy about sisterhood, political power, and the stories women use to survive. Set in an alternate 1893, the novel follows three estranged sisters whose lives become entangled with the women’s suffrage movement in New Salem, a city shaped by magic, industrial change, and deeply rooted social prejudice.
The book offers the pleasure of a spellbinding fairy-tale retelling while remaining firmly concerned with real-world systems. Its witches are not distant, glittering figures removed from ordinary life. They are workers, mothers, organizers, outcasts, and girls learning that inherited stories can be tools of resistance.
For readers seeking feminist fantasy with emotional weight, historical atmosphere, and complicated relationships at its center, Harrow’s novel has plenty to offer. It is a story about reclaiming power, but it also asks who gets remembered, who gets protected, and who is still expected to pay the price for progress.
A Historical Fantasy With Teeth
The novel’s setting draws on the Gilded Age, a period associated with rapid industrialization, class inequality, labor unrest, and the fight for women’s voting rights. Harrow transforms that history into an alternate America where magic was once part of everyday life before it was pushed underground and branded dangerous.
That premise gives the book a sharp political edge. The suppression of witchcraft resembles the historical policing of women’s knowledge, especially knowledge connected to childbirth, healing, sexuality, and communal authority. Spells survive in nursery rhymes and old sayings, disguised as harmless fragments because open practice has become unsafe.
This makes the worldbuilding feel meaningful rather than decorative. Magical lore is tied to social control, and recovering it becomes a form of historical reclamation. The fantasy elements intensify the novel’s questions about censorship, bodily autonomy, and whose version of the past becomes official.
Three Sisters At The Center
James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna are separated by temperament, circumstance, and years of resentment. Juniper is impulsive and defiant, Agnes is practical and protective, and Beatrice is intellectual, cautious, and drawn toward books and hidden knowledge. Their differences create tension, but they also prevent the story from presenting a single model of feminist strength.
The sisters’ relationship is the emotional core of the novel. They do not immediately trust one another, and their shared history includes abandonment, grief, and conflicting memories. Their reunion is therefore less about recovering a perfect family bond than confronting the damage that caused their separation.
Each sister’s journey reflects a different response to oppression. One resists openly, one tries to secure safety through endurance, and one searches for answers through scholarship. Their paths show that courage can look like rebellion, caretaking, survival, or the decision to speak after years of silence.
Feminism Beyond A Single Kind Of Heroine
A major strength of The Once and Future Witches is its expansive view of feminist solidarity. The novel includes suffragists, working-class women, queer characters, Black women, immigrants, and others whose experiences do not fit neatly into the most comfortable version of women’s rights history.
Harrow is especially interested in the limits of movements that claim to speak for all women while ignoring race and class. The suffrage campaign in the novel contains genuine hope and meaningful organizing, but it is also marked by exclusion and unequal power. That tension keeps the politics from becoming too simple.
The result is a feminist fantasy that values collective action while questioning who gets centered within it. Progress is not treated as a gift handed down by heroic leaders. It is built through arguments, sacrifices, mutual care, and the difficult work of making room for people who have been pushed aside.
| Element | What It Adds To The Novel |
|---|---|
| Historical setting | Grounds the magical story in suffrage, labor, and social inequality |
| Sisterhood | Gives the political conflict an intimate emotional foundation |
| Nursery rhymes | Turns forgotten language into a source of power |
| Multiple perspectives | Complicates the idea of a single feminist experience |
| Fairy-tale structure | Connects personal transformation with collective resistance |
The Power Hidden In Stories
Words carry unusual force in Harrow’s world. Nursery rhymes, folk sayings, and children’s songs become containers for old spells, allowing magic to persist even when institutions attempt to erase it. This idea gives familiar language a strange and compelling double meaning.
The novel suggests that stories can preserve knowledge across generations, particularly when formal histories exclude women. A rhyme repeated by children may carry instructions, warnings, or a memory of resistance. The domestic and the ordinary become politically significant because they are places where suppressed traditions can survive.
That theme will appeal to readers who enjoy mythology, folklore, and literary fantasy. Harrow does not treat storytelling as passive entertainment. Stories shape identity, establish belonging, and influence which futures seem possible. Changing the story can therefore become an act of changing society.
A Fantasy About Solidarity And Cost
The book’s vision of liberation is powerful because it is never effortless. Magic does not erase trauma, prejudice, or political disagreement. Characters must decide what they are willing to risk, and they do not always make choices that are safe or morally uncomplicated.
Harrow also gives attention to the labor behind collective movements. Meetings must be organized, messages circulated, money raised, and vulnerable people protected. The novel recognizes the invisible work that often sustains public victories, particularly the work done by women whose names may never appear in official accounts.
Readers who prefer fantasy with moral certainty may find some of these tensions challenging, but they are central to the book’s appeal. The story understands that solidarity is a practice rather than a feeling. It requires listening, accountability, and a willingness to surrender personal comfort for a broader justice.
Why The Atmosphere Lingers
The novel’s mood blends gothic darkness, historical drama, fairy-tale wonder, and hopeful rebellion. New Salem feels both familiar and uncanny, with its crowded streets, political rallies, factories, boarding houses, and hidden magical histories. The atmosphere creates a sense that every ordinary location may contain a secret.
Harrow’s prose is lyrical without losing sight of physical hardship. There are cold rooms, difficult pregnancies, dangerous streets, exhausting work, and the constant threat of violence. Against that harshness, moments of tenderness and wonder feel earned rather than sentimental.
The book also has the satisfying shape of an epic quest, even though its most important battles are frequently interpersonal and political. Its spells, curses, and confrontations matter, but so do apologies, acts of care, and the choice to believe someone whose story has been dismissed.
What To Expect Before You Read
The novel includes themes of misogyny, racism, sexual violence, domestic abuse, pregnancy-related trauma, class exploitation, and political repression. These subjects are part of the book’s historical and feminist framework, but they can make certain scenes emotionally intense.
Its pacing is deliberate, especially as the sisters’ histories and the rules of the magical world unfold. The story spends time establishing relationships and social structures before moving toward its larger confrontations. Readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction will likely appreciate that gradual development.
A few useful expectations can make the reading experience richer:
- Look for the ways ordinary language preserves forbidden knowledge.
- Pay attention to how each sister defines freedom differently.
- Consider which characters benefit from the suffrage movement and which remain excluded.
- Notice how care work and community organizing function as forms of resistance.
- Read the fairy-tale elements as political symbols as well as magical events.
If this kind of layered speculative fiction suits your reading life, you can find more reviews and genre-focused recommendations at Bookish Valhalla, where fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other imaginative stories receive thoughtful attention.
The Once and Future Witches is a strong choice for anyone looking for feminist fantasy that combines historical context with emotional storytelling. Its central magic lies in the belief that suppressed voices can return, that old stories can be reclaimed, and that power becomes more meaningful when it is shared. Pick up a copy through your preferred independent bookstore, settle into its spellbound version of New Salem, and let the sisters’ story challenge the way you think about history, resistance, and who gets to shape the future.
