Weyward

Our Review

"Witch, I heard them say. Hang the witch." 

Weyward is a sublime book and ever since I finished reading it I can't stop thinking about the characters. I flew through it.

Weyward is set over multiple timelines and each ones is as good as the next, I don't think I could pick a favourite if I tried. The timelines are seamlessly interwoven and help illustrate to the reader the impact of the past on the present. 

If this debut novel is an indication of things to come then Emilia Hart will become a go to author for me. Weyward had me hooked from the beginning and not just because one of the timelines centred around a young woman accused of witchcraft, a topic I aways find fascinating. I rooted for each character and genuinely loved them all. 

The first timeline is set in 1619 around Altha. A young woman on trial accused of killing a man using witchcraft. 

Then, in 2019 we have Kate. Kate is fleeing an abusive relationship to live in a house left to her by her recently deceased great-aunt. 

"The front door clicks shut. The step of his shoes on the floorboards. Wine, gurgling into a glass.

Panic flutters in her, like a bird." 

The final timeline is about 16-year-old Violet living in 1942 in a great hall with her brother Graham and her difficult father. 

"Violet hated Graham. She absolutely loathed him. Why did he get to study interesting things all day, like science and Latin and someone called Pythagoras, while she was supposed to be content sewing needles through a canvas?"

Violet wants to be a biologist or an eptimologist but knows this is a future that she may never be able to achieve because she is not male. 

Violet knows little about her  dead mother and has a difficult relationship with her father, he doesn't understand her love of nature and actively tries to discourage it. 

"As a child, Violet had assumed that father's 'curios' (as he called them) were signs that he shared her love of the natural world...Father didn't care that elephants formed close-knit, matriarchal groups, that they mourned their dead, like humans. Nor did he consider that the elephant he had killed - for the mere sake of an ornament for his desk - would have been bewildered by fear and pain at the moment of its death. 

For father, the tusk and everything else in the Hall, like it - was just a trophy or venerated, but conquered. 

They would never understand each other." 

Weyward had a Practical Magic Vibe to it but was also completely unique.

"Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride." 

 

Our Final Rating...

Sun, 29th January 2023