Friday, February 8, 2013

The Witch's Daughter by Paula Brackston

 The Witch's Daughter was a book I purchased on my Nook with a gift card I received for Christmas. I was looking forward to it, as I love a good historical fiction, especially from the time period this book started out in. However, I was disappointed by the delivery.

The premise of this book focuses on a girl, Bess, and her family. Bess was the daughter of a family with little standing in a small town. They owned a farm and her mother practiced as a nurse, helping deliver babies and treat various ailments. The black plague hit their town, and shortly after, witch trials did too. Her mother, being a healer, was accused of practicing witchcraft and was hanged. All the while a man, Gideon, has had his finger in the jelly pot, so to say, of the story. Before long, Bess finds herself possessing magic and is accused too. The story takes off from there and we find Bess, going by various monikers (might I add, that are all variations of the same) and possessing immortality, living through the century's. She lives her life running from Gideon and practicing medicine, while trying to avoid the dark magic within her. She's supposedly lived a solitary life, until a young girl in her recent location weasels her way into Bess's heart. She begins to train this young girl up as a practicing hedge witch, but it doesn't take long for Gideon to catch up, as he always does, and endanger Bess and her new protege. Bess find herself once again wondering, should she run, or stand up to him?

This book had a lot of potential. I think it's a very daunting task to write a story that spans mortality and time, and Brackston proved that she was lacking mettle. Too many weak spots in the story line just can not handle much scrutiny and I'm not even a reader that picks apart story weakness. I like to just read and suspend my belief. Sometimes, I even throw reason and logic out the window completely. I'll notice,  but I can overlook them. But this wasn't even close to a good enough story for me to disregard the glaring illogicality of it all. On top of that, none of the characters were particularly endearing.

Perhaps, if you haven't had much exposure to this genre and method, you may be able to enjoy it. If you've never experienced an author who can attempt this type of historical time spanning and knock it out of the park, then you would probably be able to get into it. However, I find myself just feeling rather ho-hum about it. If I need a historical fiction book with magic and immortality, I'll go back and re-read Forever by Pete Hamill.

No comments:

Post a Comment