Strong Female Witches

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This week I read book one of the series SWEEP, “Book of Shadows” by Cate Tiernan. This book focuses on the story of Morgan Rowlands, who starts to dabble with Wicca. Through this and her boyfriend/teacher she discovers that she is not only adopted, but a blood witch –someone who is born to two witch parents.

A common theme that runs through witch stories is female empowerment. Throughout SWEEP the strongest characters are the women. The protagonist, Morgan is a blood witch from the most powerful clan (Woodbanes) and it’s rare for someone to have two Woodbane parents, but she does. This results in Morgan being a powerful young witch, which is where most of the conflict in this story stems. Morgan’s friends are all women. Her boyfriend’s mother Selene is also a powerful witch and the head of her coven. Another powerful female witch in this story is Sky, who is on the opposing side. She is a witch that works with a seeker, or someone who upholds Wiccan/Witch justice.  The weakest and antagonistic characters of this book are unironically male. Morgan’s boyfriend Cal is a witch (males in this story are still called witches,) however he is often blinded by his love for Morgan that he makes stupid decisions. One antagonist to the story is Hunter, a seeker. Let’s just say he "dies" at the end of the first book.

Another theme that runs throughout witch books is sexuality/sex positive views. In this book, when Morgan and Cal are together, Morgan compares it to the magick that she makes. There isn’t a constant talk of sex in this books, but it does not shy away from it either.

Continuing the theme of female empowerment, in this story, women support other women. There’s a store in the book that Morgan often visits to purchase Wiccan/Witch items, but also to visit Alice, an older wiser witch, who acts as one of many mentors to Morgan. Women make up a majority of the covens and women are often the coven leaders.

This book was enjoyable because the characters were more realistic and it took on the most realistic fantasy genre as it could. There are fifteen books in the series and they all run around 150 pages each.


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