ISBN: 0-06-105796-7 Order from: Amazon.com
The continuing adventures of Alfreda, the student witch in a village on the border on Canada and US are enlivened by some real villains.
Reviewed by David on May 31, 1998
Genre: Fantasy (Alternate Reality, Historical, American Fantasy)
Synopsis: A 13-year girl learning magic and medicine in an early 19th century Michigan village copes with everyday emergencies, as well as a clan of kidnapping sorcerers.
Full Review: Kimbriel created the folksy 19th century setting, as well as the precocious heroine Allie in the prequel Night Calls. The setting, a collection of remote villages, settled mostly by immigrants from Scandinavia and Scotland, is described with a wealth of detail and a refreshing lack of sentimentality.
One of the most important aspects of the hard village life is the importance of kinships and friendships. Allie learns medicine and magic from her cousin Marta, and has to supervise a birth on her own, cope with minor evil spells bothering her neighbors, and boys starting to show interest in her still rather undeveloped body.
The life becomes much more exciting when a clan of sorcerers kidnaps Allie, something they have been doing for generations in order to get powerful mates and servants. Allie has to exert all her skills, and look for dangerous allies, to preserve her sanity and independence, and start her compaign for freedom. The evil, almost immortal sorcerers, however, have never realized just how much trouble a 13-year-old can cause...
This book is rather more exciting than the prequel. The presence of real villains helps create and resolve a real conflict. Allie is still almost improbably mature, but her performance under pressure makes the book move much faster.
This is an interesting setting, and I look forward to more books about Allie, who, after all, still has some growing to do.
More information is available at the author's web site.
Overall: 6; Plot: 6; Characters: 6.5; Style: 6; World-building: 6; Originality: 7;
Harper, November 1997, Mass-market, 359 pages
ISBN: 0-06-105796-7 Order from: Amazon.com