Review: The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass (Metamorphosis #1)
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 Stars bumped because I just don't get all the hating on this novel.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is the debut novel of Adan Jerreat-Poole, is an English Literature PhD (McMaster University), now in postdoctoral studies at Ryerson University in Canada where they study disability issues. This novel is a dark fantasy with elements of sci-fi (other galaxies). It follows the story of Eli, a witch-made girl, composed of hawthorn, glass, and other scary things. Eli is made to be an assassin and is trained in the witch world, called The City of Eyes, to penetrate the human world, The City of Ghosts, to kill ghosts that pose a threat to both worlds. Eli, when we meet her, has been an extremely successful tool for her mother witch, Circenae. Yet, when the Coven sends her on an assignment and she wields one of her seven blades to kill a purported witch, she is horrified to find that she has killed a human instead. Why, if the witches say killing ghosts is to protect the human world as well as their own, have they decided to kill a human? Eli, who lives in fear of being unmade and her parts scattered, tries to cover up this fact. She returns to the City of Eyes only to be turned around and sent on another mission, with little recovering time. This time she finds the ghost she's been sent to slay has long been dead and gone. What, exactly, is going on? As Eli searches for answers and tries to figure out how to satisfy the terms of her impossible mission, she meets Tav, a colorful non-binary character, and Cam, an Uber driver with mysterious links to the witch world. Together they will cross back and forth between the two cities. Eli will discover things about her childhood friends Kite and Clytemnestra, the Coven and its workings, and the damning lack of balance between the two worlds.
The "tool" narrative, where one is created for a purpose and balks at that purpose, has been explored quite a lot, including recently in Jordan Ifueko's Raybearer, but as a trope, it is one with rich opportunities for exploration of personal aegis, the subjugation of personal will, and vulnerability to compulsions. The propulsive action in this novel doesn't allow for a great deal of exploration of some of these issues (we see both Eli and Kite, in particular, are trapped in the webs of their respective roles) and the worldbuilding feels at times like a rough sketch in the beginning. This is a duology, though, and some of the choices made by characters leave open pathways for a deeper exploration of what powers the witch world possesses (we see clear indications in this first book) and the battle between the young and old witches of the Coven. At times the plot felt scattered and some of the characters I wanted to know more about (the young witches Kite and Clytemnestra, and the Hedgewitch in the City of Ghosts) didn't get as much time on the page as I'd like. The abruptness of Eli's encountering first Tav, then Cam, felt a little jarring since this obviously was very out of character for a loner like Eli to suddenly start working with others whose purposes are inscrutable, yet she seems so thrown off her stride by her two disastrous missions at the start of the book that her acceptance of what she hopes is assistance is plausible. In spite of these issues, the novel reads like an imaginative queer fever dream and I enjoyed it. I don't understand the very negative reviews on this book. I look forward to seeing where the story goes in the forthcoming The Boi of Feather and Steel.
I received a digital review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 Stars bumped because I just don't get all the hating on this novel.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is the debut novel of Adan Jerreat-Poole, is an English Literature PhD (McMaster University), now in postdoctoral studies at Ryerson University in Canada where they study disability issues. This novel is a dark fantasy with elements of sci-fi (other galaxies). It follows the story of Eli, a witch-made girl, composed of hawthorn, glass, and other scary things. Eli is made to be an assassin and is trained in the witch world, called The City of Eyes, to penetrate the human world, The City of Ghosts, to kill ghosts that pose a threat to both worlds. Eli, when we meet her, has been an extremely successful tool for her mother witch, Circenae. Yet, when the Coven sends her on an assignment and she wields one of her seven blades to kill a purported witch, she is horrified to find that she has killed a human instead. Why, if the witches say killing ghosts is to protect the human world as well as their own, have they decided to kill a human? Eli, who lives in fear of being unmade and her parts scattered, tries to cover up this fact. She returns to the City of Eyes only to be turned around and sent on another mission, with little recovering time. This time she finds the ghost she's been sent to slay has long been dead and gone. What, exactly, is going on? As Eli searches for answers and tries to figure out how to satisfy the terms of her impossible mission, she meets Tav, a colorful non-binary character, and Cam, an Uber driver with mysterious links to the witch world. Together they will cross back and forth between the two cities. Eli will discover things about her childhood friends Kite and Clytemnestra, the Coven and its workings, and the damning lack of balance between the two worlds.
The "tool" narrative, where one is created for a purpose and balks at that purpose, has been explored quite a lot, including recently in Jordan Ifueko's Raybearer, but as a trope, it is one with rich opportunities for exploration of personal aegis, the subjugation of personal will, and vulnerability to compulsions. The propulsive action in this novel doesn't allow for a great deal of exploration of some of these issues (we see both Eli and Kite, in particular, are trapped in the webs of their respective roles) and the worldbuilding feels at times like a rough sketch in the beginning. This is a duology, though, and some of the choices made by characters leave open pathways for a deeper exploration of what powers the witch world possesses (we see clear indications in this first book) and the battle between the young and old witches of the Coven. At times the plot felt scattered and some of the characters I wanted to know more about (the young witches Kite and Clytemnestra, and the Hedgewitch in the City of Ghosts) didn't get as much time on the page as I'd like. The abruptness of Eli's encountering first Tav, then Cam, felt a little jarring since this obviously was very out of character for a loner like Eli to suddenly start working with others whose purposes are inscrutable, yet she seems so thrown off her stride by her two disastrous missions at the start of the book that her acceptance of what she hopes is assistance is plausible. In spite of these issues, the novel reads like an imaginative queer fever dream and I enjoyed it. I don't understand the very negative reviews on this book. I look forward to seeing where the story goes in the forthcoming The Boi of Feather and Steel.
I received a digital review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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