The Once and Future Witches

What Readers Say

Readers come to The Once and Future Witches for the premise — witchcraft as feminist weapon in 1890s America — and stay for the sisterhood. The three Eastwood sisters are estranged when the book opens, and watching them find each other again while simultaneously building a movement is what keeps readers turning pages. The magic system is inseparable from women's anger: every spell is powered by accumulated fury, by nursery rhymes and forbidden words that generations of women kept alive in secret. Readers who connect with this book describe it as "all feminine rage" in the best possible sense, and Harrow's writing gets singled out as the kind of craft that makes you want to slow down and read sentences twice.

What surprises people is how the personal and political stay in balance. The suffragette movement plot is real and detailed; the sisterhood healing arc is real and detailed; neither swallows the other.

Who It's For

Readers who loved Circe or The Power and want something that channels that same fury into a historical fantasy with real political stakes. People who want fantasy where the magic feels like it means something — here it's literally the power women were burned for, kept alive in whispered rhymes. If you want the suffragette movement crossed with a witch's movement crossed with a story about three sisters healing old wounds, this is a rare exact match.

Reading Context

Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel and an NPR Best Books of the Year pick. Pairs naturally with The Power by Naomi Alderman and Nightbitch for readers working through a female rage reading list. Harrow's other standalone, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, has a different tone — quieter, more fairytale — but shares the same quality of prose.