The Black Witch and The Iron Flower (The Black Witch Chronicles #1 and #2) by Laurie Forest

Amy  

young adult, fantasy

I read the Advance Readers Copy I picked up at ALA Midwinter--this novel comes out in May.

First of all, I do believe Laurie Forest's heart was in the right place. I believe the purpose of The Black Witch is to show how horrible it is when groups of people persecute other groups of people based on things like race, heritage, sexuality, beliefs, abilities, gender, etc. And it’s especially horrible when people with these opinions are in a place of power and control. She decided to illustrate this by writing a story set in a world full of magical beings where the main character, Elloren, has been raised in a secluded small town, raised to believe the religion and the histories of her people, and to feel superior to all other races/religions. Then, Elloren goes off to school and starts realizing that her people’s teachings and behaviors are not necessarily correct, righteous, or humane. By the end of the novel, she has a firm belief that her people have been wrong and is willing to stand against them. It all sounds like a wonderful moral. I also like that it teaches that history is subjective and that religious and historical books are written by people with an agenda.

However, in illustrating her point, most of the book was extremely offensive and off-putting. And everything in this book is an extreme—the awful people are insanely terrible. The racism isn’t just racism but racial purity at the Nazi level. There is segregation and open hostility towards those who are different. In using offensive language, showing the ugly side of this world in such vivid, horrifying detail for the majority of the book, and not giving the marginalized characters any real voice, the author turned me off. The world painted by the author is so visually beautiful. But, underneath is ugliness, racism, nationalism, and hatred for anyone or anything different. And they are a very conservative, controlling, highly religious population. I saw where the book was going and the main character did, after all, come to the university with ignorance due to being so sheltered. It took time to change her whole view of the world. I feel this was realistic for this character. But the book was almost 600 pages long and most of it made me twitchy to read the horror and hatred.

The story is reminiscent of Harry Potter in some ways: It mostly takes place at a boarding school for magical people, there are evil students out to get the heroine, most people are hateful toward the famous student, the heroine has an evil relative, there’s even a snakey science professor that immediately informs the “celebrity” that she will get no special treatment in his class.

This novel was also very "high school drama" in the sense that there are snobby, entitled students bullying those they view as weak--the obnoxious, jealous, popular girl being one of the worst characters in the novel, of course. This is not my favorite sort of YA to read. Additionally there were several unanswered questions and inconsistencies that made aspects of the story seem nonsensical. And the ending was abrupt and solved nothing. I’d have preferred less vitriol and more resolution, even knowing this is the first in a series.

Anyway, I like the intention and the storytelling but the resulting novel is flawed.  

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Added 3/29/19

The Iron Flower    

Amy  

fantasy

This sequel finally moved past the prejudicial, supremacist discomfort that was so rampant in The Black Witch and pushed the story line forward. It was long in the telling with a lot of repetition regarding Elloren's new and improved opinions (which are now much more respectful and empathetic of other races and belief systems) and regarding her feelings about kissing and the sensation of it "kindling her lines of fire" and her "fire flaring".

We all knew Aunt Vyvian was mean and terrible. But I thought it was insanely out of character for her to encourage Elloren to dress in a manner pushing the societal norms for the dances. They are supposed to be members of a conservative religion with strict rules.  And Vyvian is a leader in the sect. Yet, she's willing to flout the rules when it comes to dress codes? I don't buy it. A religious zealot with an overriding sense of style? Silly. Of course, I understand why Laurie Forest wanted to make Elloren appear special and appealing. It just felt forced.

Also, it had been so long since the first novel in the series, I would have liked more in the way of reminding me who all the characters were. I managed to remember most of them eventually except for Ariel and Wynter. They were vaguely interchangeable in my mind and none of the details came back to me. With all the characters in this novel, I hope Black does a better job in the third sequel of reminding us about the critical characters.

Despite all of its flaws, and the fact that the end game is a given, I do plan to go along for the ride in the next sequel because I enjoy the feeling of hope within the righteous resistance effort as well as some of the characters who seem genuine or mysterious.