Information
Goodreads: Witchlings
Series: None (yet)
Age Category: Middle Grade
Source: Library
Published: 2022
Summary
Every year, the twelve-year-old witches of Ravenskill participate in the Black Moon Ceremony to be sorted into covens. Seven longs to be placed in House Hyacinth with her best friend Poppy, but instead is selected to be leftover, a Spare, meaning that not only will she never come into her full powers, but that she will be treated as a second-class citizen forever, doomed to experience poverty as an abused servant to the wealthy witches on the Hill and shunned by society at large. Worse still, because she does not accept her fate, her coven’s circle will not seal, meaning that she will actually lose all her powers forever! Desperate, Seven invokes the Impossible Task, giving her and her two new Spare partners 21 days to fell a monster and keep their powers, or be cursed to live the rest of their lives as toads.
Review
Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega attempts to hit all the right notes in a middle grade fantasy by providing the usual friendship drama plot line, lots of magical creatures, and plenty of action. Personally, however, I found the book to be reminiscent of other current middle grade titles, while not providing anything extra or special. Additionally, the characters are flat, the worldbuilding weak, and the plot just a little too convoluted to make sense. I really, really wanted to love Witchlings, but this is not the book for me–though I can see it appealing to a tween audience who has less familiarity with other similar offerings out there.
Though fantasy books often use the same elements, I find that the characters in a book can often be what makes a story feel special. How the characters react to their circumstances and how they support (or do not support) each other allows variations on old plot lines such as the one in Witchlings–a monster is on the loose killing town dwellers, but political corruption prevents action. Unfortunately, however, the characters in Witchlings feel just a bit bland. Seven is the protagonist who thinks she knows everything and gets to be the leader and have special powers, even though her teammates Valley and Thorn arguably contribute more equipment, knowledge, and emotional sensitivity than Seven ever does. Valley is the bully-turned-BFF (she was just misunderstood because she has her own issues at home), and Thorn is the timid new girl who turns brave through the power of friendship. They are cute together, but they do read kind of like cookie-cutter characters for the ideal MG fantasy adventure.
Then there is the worldbuilding, which is woefully under-developed. Seven seems to live in an all-witch world where there is an alliance of twelve magical cities and they are surrounded by the Cursed Forest. But she also has a toad named Edgar Allan Toad, suggesting that her world is somehow overlaid on top of ours. And later she references that humans live in the “humdrum” and pulls out her phone to text. How do humans and witches co-exist? I have no idea.
The whole idea of Spares also seems under-developed, and present just to include a Message about inclusivity. The premise is that each year three twelve-year-old witches are selected, not to enter a prestigious coven where they get to train together and network with past coven members, but instead to be Spares, forbidden from doing high-level magic, excluded from all jobs except sewage clean-up and servitude to abusive rich people, and shunned by townsfolk who will not allow them to enter certain shops or have good seats at sports events.
There is no clear reason for this. The Spares are not bad at magic–they are not prohibited from using it for alleged safety reasons. It seems like the town really just wanted a caste system where they could select random children every year to be doomed to work for rich people for pennies. And everyone goes along with it! Even the “good” people like Seven’s parents do not question the system or suggest that donations be made to starving Spares who cannot get a job. They just bring their children every year to be selected to be social outcasts at the whim of the town leader, a woman depicted by the book as kind, loving, and wise!
Seven’s parents, and those of her friends, also notably do nothing to intervene in the fate of their children. After Seven invokes the clause of the impossible task, meaning she, Valley, and Thorn have only three weeks to fell a Nightbeast or be turned into toads forever, Seven’s parents just vaguely say they are always there for her, then go about their lives. The book tries to pretend that the impossible task will not suffer outside intervention, but the town leader intervenes spectacularly at one point and nothing happens. So why can’t Seven’s parents offer her a ride to the library, at the very least? Or suggest that she not waste some of her precious 21 days doing stuff like taking off to attend a toad race?? Or maybe just say that they will not cast her into the street to die in poverty now that she is a Spare? Parental care is almost completely lacking in this book, but it is strange specifically because the book seems to want readers to think that Seven’s parents and Thorn’s parents are among the good ones.
If readers can get past the bland characters and the half-hearted worldbuilding, there is a wild ride of a story somewhere in here. Spells fly around and expeditions are made into the Cursed Forest, and animals talk. Readers who enjoy fantasy worlds but do not care particularly if those worlds make sense or are developed meaningfully may find that trying to figure out just what on earth is happening in this book is enough to keep them reading. Ultimately, Witchlings is a book that relies on its overstuffed plot to keep readers from thinking too hard about everything else going on. And some readers may not mind that.
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