Overcoming the odds as a teen mum and proving the haters wrong are among the inspirations for a North Devon author’s debut rollercoaster chase novel set in.
Book review: The Coven is about a dystopian witch-hunt
07 Mar 2021
Gulf Today Report
Nothing threatens patriarchy more than when the power balance tips in the favour of women.
Add witchcraft and magic into the mix and you’ll end up with a dystopian society where powerful women are locked up or even killed in order to restore this so-called equilibrium.
This is the world we find ourselves in “The Coven,” as per The Independent’s review of the book.
The dynamics of power is a prevalent theme in Lizzie Fry’s debut novel.
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In a fictional version of Earth where powerful witchcraft not only exists, but is something many individuals actively inherit, women are taken away to prisons known as Angel Caves where pseudoscientists claim they can cure them of their “sickness” (spoiler alert, they don’t).
THE COVEN by Lizzie Fry (Sphere, £14.99) is set in a world similar to our own except that there, witchcraft exists as part of normal life. Or it did, until a right-wing religious movement in the US saw a misogynist campaign against witches as its route to state power and ultimately to world domination.
As suppression and oppression of witches specifically, and women in general, grows, a small band of escapees and their allies are on the run in the British countryside.
So what we are presented with is essentially a chase thriller with magical elements and good fun it is too. Star readers will cheer as the characters discover that the division between men and women is intended primarily as a means to strengthen the division between rich and poor.