Early Review – The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Length: 297 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Release Date: June 1, 2021
ASIN: B08DHM49F9
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 4/5 stars
“For centuries, witches have maintained the climate, their power from the sun peaking in the season of their birth. But now their control is faltering as the atmosphere becomes more erratic. All hope lies with Clara, an Everwitch whose rare magic is tied to every season.
In Autumn, Clara wants nothing to do with her power. It’s wild and volatile, and the price of her magic—losing the ones she loves—is too high, despite the need to control the increasingly dangerous weather.
In Winter, the world is on the precipice of disaster. Fires burn, storms rage, and Clara accepts that she’s the only one who can make a difference.
In Spring, she falls for Sang, the witch training her. As her magic grows, so do her feelings, until she’s terrified Sang will be the next one she loses.
In Summer, Clara must choose between her power and her happiness, her duty and the people she loves…before she loses Sang, her magic, and thrusts the world into chaos.”
Series Info/Source: I got a copy of this book from NetGalley to review. This is a stand alone book.
Story (4/5): I really enjoyed a lot about this story. It explores a lot of topics; climate change, coming of age, and has a love story too. The story is pretty linear and fairly simple. There isn’t a lot of action but the magic system is intriguing and Clara spends a lot of time in thought and introspection.
This story does have some problems as well. The idea of there being only one Ever witch that can address the whole world’s climate problems is a bit ridiculous, this is kind of briefly addressed towards the end of the book with a single sentence but was dealt with clumsily. Also the way things wrapped up with the eclipse seemed completely contrived and out of the blue and didn’t really jive with the rest of the magic system.
Characters (4/5): Clara was a bit whiny and vanilla for me. She spends a lot of time complaining about what she can’t do rather than what she could do. I do sympathize with her past and the fact that her power has hurt people she loved, which scares her. I enjoyed Sang a lot more, he was just such an amazing character. The other side characters are okay but feel a bit underdeveloped.
Setting (4/5): This is set in the near future where extreme weather has become even worse because of damage to the environment (which was weird because I just finished “Migrations” too which was set in a similar setting). The setting is on the East Coast in a rural area. I loved the idea of seasonal witches and the way the magic system works to help them modulate weather. This was creative and well done.
Writing Style (4/5): The story structure is fairly simple and is told completely from Clara’s viewpoint. I loved the epitaphs at the beginning of each chapter and how symbolic they ended up being, that was very clever. The writing was well done, flowed smoothly and the description throughout was beautiful. This is a bit more of an introspective book and we spend a lot of time in Clara’s head following her thoughts. It was well done and the book has kind of a quiet peaceful tone to it despite all the intense weather scenes.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed this. Aside from some small issues around how the story was tied up, this was really well done and really beautifully written. I would recommend reading if you think the combination of weather magic and climate change sound intriguing. This is an excellent debut novel and I will definitely be checking out future books by this author.
