Review Catch-Up: The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finlay

[megwrites]

Title: The Patriot Witch (Traitor to the Crown, Book 1)
Author: C.C. Finlay (ccfinlay.com; ccfinlay)
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Del Rey




Reviewer's Note:: This entire novel is available for free PDF download from the author's website. I highly recommend taking advantage of it.

Basic Plotline: Proctor Brown is a fairly ordinary young man in pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts. He just wants to expand the family farm and impress the father of the woman he wants to marry, Emily. But Proctor is also heir to the legacy of witchcraft powers in his family. After running into a British officer by chance, Proctor is catapulted in the chaos of the Revolution and must discover how to master his latent powers for the good of himself and his fledgling country.

The Positives: I really enjoyed this book, and above all, the experience of reading it was pleasurable for me. I didn't want to put it down, and that's what a well told story should accomplish.

This book covers the American Revolutionary War, which is a period of history that doesn't get a lot of love from speculative fiction writers on either the SF or fantasy sides. It seems like WWII, medieval Europe, Ancient Rome, and the American Civil War all get a lot more attention, so this subject was refreshing because it hadn't been retrod thousands of times previous, at least not in this way.

There's a YA-esque sensibility to this novel even though it's marketed as adult, which is a good thing. I think it gives it a kind of streamlined, less messily constructive narrative that I'd readily hand to a wide age range. I'd give this to anyone from a 50-year-old history buff to an advanced middle grade reader discovering their love for history or SF/F.

The novel is well researched and the historian in me really enjoyed the detail and care that went into crafting the world that Proctor Brown inhabits. I didn't pick out any deliberate or careless slip ups, and I think the story works well and believably given it's setting.

The pacing of the novel, which is something I notice a lot, was very even and steady. There weren't any excessively slow or fast places, even the ending. There is suspense, but events don't go from taking chapters to pages to unfold just to wrap up the story. There is room for the sequels left, but the reader gets a complete tale in the first novel.

The Negatives: I wasn't entirely wowed by the "plucky young hero" part of the story, because it seems a bit cliche in the context of stories about the Revolutionary war. I've seen a lot of novels centering on young men destined to be heroes unknowing of how huge a deal America's independence will become to world history. Not a lot where the young men in question were good witches, given.

I also thought that the dialogue occasionally felt uneven, switching between 18th century sounding and somewhat modern. I'm not an expert on what everyday speech would have sounded like, especially given that the characters range from British officers, merchants, farmers, and preachers, which would give them all a different kinds of speech patterns.

Other than those things, which didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book all that much, I really enjoyed this book. It made a long car ride go a lot faster.

CoC Score: 6/10. There were black characters. There was a mention of Crispus Attucks, who was a Black citizen of Boston who fell at the Boston Massacre (I'm always glad when people remember him!) and Black soldiers who fought on the American side. There was also Lydia, the black woman at the witch's farm is dealt with sympathetically and compassionately, though she doesn't get a lot of time on screen in this novel. She is magically enslaved to her white mistress and not able to free herself in the novel, and that saddened me a little, because I am bothered when portrayals of historical black people always concentrate on slavery.

And, of course, I would love to see this novel told from, say, Lydia's POV or that of a Black character. Or any CoC for that matter, because I do think there's a real lack of stories that testify to to what non-white people contributed and experienced in that time period in America.

There is also mention of white men dressing up as Native Americans to launch an attack on the witches' farmhouse, which is a historically accurate portrayal. Whites of that time did do that, and there was a clear attitude of regarding Native American peoples as savages, so it isn't precisely inaccurate, but it would've been nice if at least some small mention or authorial way of saying of "uh, no, this wasn't how they were at all and yeah, attitudes were horrid back then" could've been worked in - because persistent modern attitudes about Native American people, both then and now, are still sadly prevailing.

Gender Score: 8.5/10. The novel does a good job with it's female characters, even though it centers on the journey of a young man. A lot of hero's tales can't manage this, so I was really impressed to see that Proctor's quest isn't accomplished by ignoring, belittling, or using women. Emily isn't vilified for rejecting Proctor, and that's something I appreciated. Her side of the story and the reasons why it isn't going to work between them are understood.

The witches at the farm, mostly women, are all their own people, with their own agency. While Proctor does some fighting on their behalf, they are shown as being able to defend themselves magically as well, and a lot of the hardest magical combat is handled by the women. I also appreciated that while Proctor does learn and is gifted with magic, he doesn't automatically surpass or outdo the women in the time he is there. He's strong, but he's not stronger than, say, a much older woman who's been practicing magic since she was a child.

There's a scene where the female lead of the story, Deborah, has to bury one of her parents and it's made clear in that scene that she's perfectly capable of digging that grave, of doing whatever it is that has to be done, and Proctor helping her is a way of being kind, not of doing something that she can't. That's the tone that the novel takes towards women over all, that they are capable and where Proctor does help them, it's to be kind and do his part, not because they can't.

I also appreciated that these strong women did not have to break out of the constraints of their time period and turn into radical ahead-of-their-time feminists just to be strong/interesting when it wouldn't have been believable for them to be. They are as they would have been in that time, and they are shown as being capable and relevant - something a lot of historical novels don't manage.


GLBT Score: 0. No significant GLBT characters or situations mentioned. However, this is a good faith zero. Given the time/place/circumstances of the novel, I can see why this would be and why Proctor, unless he or someone close to him was known to be GLBT (or their understanding of it at the time), wouldn't encounter anything of that sort.

Ablism Score: 5/10. There are some mentions and situations where characters are disabled or become disabled through injury. It's handled fairly adequately, though there isn't any leading character that could be ID'ed as PWD.