Laurie ForestRecensioni

DNF at 78%.

Besides all the obvious problems about this book - which I won't get into now - it was just NOT good.

Might go more in depth on my thoughts later.

I saw a lot of people write reviews on another site saying they didn't like the comments about racism because it's overdone in the book. It didn't bother me because I think it's fairly accurate to what life is like. Is it a bit heavy-handed--yes, but it was fine. I read more for the story.½

My friend likes this series so I gave it a shot, but I can't stand a naive/racist heroine whose journey involves the slow realization that bigotry is bad.

I think the School Library Journal review nailed it:

"Teens will have to get through hundreds of pages of stereotypical characterizations of marginalized groups (non-Gardnerians are hateful and ultraviolent, their blood is "polluted," they mate like animals, the non-Gardnerian women are trying to steal Gardnerian men, etc.) before Elloren begins to recognize that maybe Gardnerians are the bad guys in her realm. Although unlearning prejudices is a timely theme in YA, Forest handles this issue clumsily."

This was fantastic. Tessla was amazing. Vale was amazing. This was truly epic reading. My one and only complaint was the confessions of love between Tessla and Vale. Those few paragraphs should've been deleted. I loved how they became friends and I could believe they were well on their way to love but it would've been stronger without it. It could've been left for the epilogue.

But two paragraphs is literally my only complaint. The rest of the entire novel was utterly brilliant. It reminds me of when I read The Network series. Partly because the prequel was unexpectedly epic also. But this was just perfect fantasy. The world building is incredible and the messages of peace and harmony are the perfect balance of pushing a message without overwhelming the reader with the message. Yeah, the whole peace and harmony bit sounds kind of trite but this book really does tackle some of society's most important issues in a fair, objective and subtle manner. Without becoming a mouthpiece for the author's opinions. There's tons of great quotes about how power corrupts and the benefits of open mindedness. No character is portrayed as black and white. All of them have shades of grey. All of them are prejudiced in their own ways and it was interesting to see how the author demonstrated the contradictions in viewpoints. There's this understanding conveyed that readers will and do have their own biases, their own prejudices - but encourages them to identify their own biases and work towards overcoming them.

The friendship between Tessla and Vale was adorable. Vale was such an honourable man - even though he's somewhat of a jerk. Tessla was fiery and strong and determined. And I loved how even though they were both forced into a bad situation they were on the same page. They both understood that each of them were giving up their freedom but that they were working to make the best of it. And Vale's dedication to his friends was inspiring. And Fain! Fain was fantastic. Such a sweetie.

I only wish this was longer. I'm excited to dive into the rest of the series.

Don’t let the 1-star reviews scare you away. Read this book and decide for yourself what the author is trying to do. Are there racial rants in the book? Yes, there certainly are in an attempt to show a world where hatred, lies, and mistaken beliefs mar relationships between different species. If anything, the problems in this world seemed uncomfortably similar to our own current world situation.

Saying that this book promotes racial hatred is like saying that Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle promotes unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry. Literature is at its most powerful when it confronts difficult issues, and this book certainly succeeded in starting a discussion.

I am looking forward to seeing what the author does with this world in volume two.

Pretty standard YA fantasy -- a little over-dramatic at times, some entertaining new worlds, and a giant dark chosen-one kind of secret hanging over the main character. I'm being unfair to review this now, because I didn't get the chance to do it right after I read it and I can't recall all of it that well. It's not terrible, there are kittens, Elloren learns a whole lot real fast about the world not being the sheltered place she grew up, and sometimes her naivete is grating.

Apparently there's a controversy about racist beliefs in the books -- yep, there's a lot of racial tension and a whole lot of mean talk and Elloren is kind of an idiot about it at first, but figures out that she wants no part of that kind of behavior and creates a group of friends. Too bad about the chicken -- that part was horrible, but it certainly illustrated a lesson.

Advanced reader's copy provided by Edelweiss.

June 2021

Another re-read of this in the books. THis is still one of my all-time favorite YA series and I can't wait for book 4 this year.

I am so happy i re-read this after finishing the novellas. Everything is fitting into place and I am ready for Iron Flower.

The first part of my annual re-read is complete! This is one of my all-time favorite series and I can't wait for the new book in the fall. Wandfasted 5/5 Light Mage 4.5/5

It Finally Arrived!!!!! Dropping all of the books I am currently reading to binge this right now. Already not prepared for the wait on book 4.

I am kind of heartbroken. I still love this series but this book was filler. I don't feel that anything really happened and I was able to guess where things were going at quite a few points. The ending was not surprising and I already have more theories to where this is going.

My biggest pet peeve with this book is that something that you have known is going to happen since book one, and were highly anticipating (or at least I was), was thrown in as an "oh, by the way, this happened".

This is still my favorite YA series and I will finish it and binge re-read them all before the next book. Looking forward to book 4 when things hopefully start to come together.

I really wasn't planning on re-reading the Black Witch before I had the Iron Flower in my hands. Now... i don't think i have a choice. Laurie Forest has completely drawn me into this world and it has quickly become one of my favorites.

Ich gebe es zu, ich hatte erwartet, dieses sei der dritte und letzte Band der Reihe um die Schwarze Zauberin Elloren Gardner. Aber die Geschichte ist noch nicht zu Ende...

Gardneria weitet seine Machtansprüche aus und macht seine Grenzen magisch dicht - um die Bevölkerung vor der "schmutzigen" Magie der anderen Völker zu schützen (gleichzeitig wird so aber auch die Flucht aus dem Land verhindert). Und während es offiziell bei Höchststrafe verboten ist, sich anderer Magie als der den Magiern von Gardneria zugehörigen zu bedienen, ist es ausgerechnet Vogel, der Höchste Magier, der sich dunkelster Magie bedient.

Noch ist keinem in Gardneria bewusst, welche magischen Kräfte Elloren, Enkelin der Schwarzen Zauberin, wirklich hat - als Leser bekommt man auf den ersten Seiten einen Eindruck davon. Und dann ist Elloren vor allen auf der Flucht und der sicherste Ort scheint dann doch Gardneria zu sein, wenn sie sich unter den Schutz ihres magischen Partners, Lukas Grey, stellt. Doch diese Sicherheit ist trügerisch.

Der dritte Band der Serie bringt Lukas und Elloren wieder zusammen, man erlebt, wie restrektiv die gardnerische Gesellschaft geworden ist und wie stark die Unterdrückung all derer vorangeschritten ist, die keine Gardnerier sind. Unterbrochen wird Ellorens Geschichte dann immer wieder von anderen Schauplätzen, in denen es um den Aufbau einer vereinigten Armee geht, die sich Gardneria entgegenstellt. Und Elloren erhält jetzt doch eine Ausbildung - immer unter dem Druck, dass Vogel ihr nachstellt und ihre Kräfte zu seinen machen möchte.

Eine spannender dritter Teil, in dem vieles passiert, der manchmal, insbesondere in Bezug auf Ellorens Ausbildung, aber auch auf der Stelle tritt. Aber wenn ich den Schluss richtig interpretiere, kommt es wohl im vierten Band zum großen Finale, bei dem Elloren eine wichtige Rolle spielen wird.

Man sollte aber unbedingt die ersten beiden Bände der Black Witch Saga gelesen haben.

Quickie summary.

No, I don’t find this book racist; it’s about racism, but it doesn’t condone it. There are many other reviews who does a better job at pointing this out - I have other things I want to point out.

There are some timeline/urgency issues; certain world-moving-political events are made to sound very important/devastating, but they are only sparsely mentioned in between the much more “important” YA love interest through-line, and thus the “urgency” is diluted.

I was really interested in learning more about the world, the different cultures, the magic system or even the university itself, but instead we get a lot of the MC mooning over the colour of somebody’s eyes.

I did give a high rating though (4-stars), because I did enjoy the book, even with it‘s confusing mix of serious themes (racism and how we are taught it) and fluffy scenes (mean girls and gorgeous guys).

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in The Black Witch Chronicles. It looks like there are going to be at least five books in this series, with the fifth book to be published June 2022. I got this as an audiobook from Audible.com.

Audiobook Quality (4/5): I have no complaints about the audiobook quality, it was fine.

Story (2/5): I stopped reading this book about 25% of the way in, it was just completely not for me. This is a dark world where women are forced to be wandfasted to men to help them control themselves. Our main character, Elloren, ends up at University where she is expected to find someone to be wandfast to. In the beginning of the book a main plot line is Elloren and another powerful female mage basically fighting over a guy...yuck.

Characters (2/5): All of the characters in this story just felt wrong and slimy and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. They just weren’t people I wanted to read about. I am sure some of this is the point of the story but I didn’t like it and felt no reason to read something that makes me feel so awful.

Setting (3/5): There is definitely world-building here and, while I didn’t enjoy the world at all, you can tell a lot of effort went into creating the society and magic system.

Writing Style (2/5): I was also not a fan of the writing style. The writing is very descriptive and moves very slow. It took nearly 25% of the book just to get Elloren from her home to University and I am not really sure why. This book was just so far from being something I liked. I don’t DNF audiobooks very often but I just couldn’t keep listening to this one.

My Summary (2/5): Overall I did not like this. I disliked pretty much everything about it; the story, the characters, the world and the writing style. I will be steering clear of Forest in the future and checking to see if I can get my Audible credit back.

Too much exposition.

I was so excited to get approved to read this book! Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this amazing book by Laurie ! For a 640 page book, well let's just say I devoured it! Laurie Forest continues to weave the magical spell that is the Black Witch Chronicles. Her writing is so utterly beautiful and engrossing, it was definitely hard to put down. The way she describes everything in such gorgeous detail is something I love about this series, As I got closer to the end I realized that there would be yet another book in this series and I was so freaking happy!
So the books starts off with Elloren is instructed to go back home and seek the protection of Lukas Grey. The reason? Their potential allies have found out that she is the Black Witch of prophecy and are going to send assassins to kill her. Will Lukas help her? Should she trust him with the secret?
Elloren must learn to control her powers before Marcus Vogel captures her and uses her for his own plans. Her friends and family are scattered across the continent with their own battles to win.
I loved this book. Seriously, this will be a series that I can read again and again.

This book is a fun sequel, but I found it hard to enjoy because of repetitive events and themes, presented below.
- Welcome to the Resistance, who solves every problem by calling for help.
- Elloren thinks about Yvan. All. The. Time.
- Between the reader and the cast of characters, only Elloren is surprised by anything.
- Elloren says she is willing to do anything for the Resistance, but she literally refuses to do the only strategic power-play within her ability, i.e. wandfast to Lukas Grey.

Raised by an eccentric uncle in the backwoods, Elloren is swept away by her aunt to meet high society and begin her studies at the reputable University. True to any college experience, it forces her to look beyond her narrow racial and religious prejudices to critically approach history and take an interest in the tense political climate.

Characters fall into traditional roles: the steadfast friend, the spiteful enemy, and the forbidden love, to name a few. This makes their development and the general plot pretty predictable. Still, Elloren's newfound friends are so genuine and open in supporting or criticizing one another that one can't help loving them.

Overall, the Black Witch is a fun introduction to what promises to be an intense adventure. It was interesting to read, and some scenes were powerful in their emotion and riveting in detail. Looking back at the end of the book, it all felt like the lead up to something more, not a story in itself.

If you are frustrated by wishy-washy or emotional protagonists, Elloren might be hard to handle.

Fun fact: Rafe is my hero, hands down favorite. I would want him as a bro.

Any times that I read a series I find myself forcing to get through the second book in a series, but this 2nd book in The Black Witch series was filled with huge action and lots of explanations and background stories. I found myself flying through this book and transfixed throughout every page!!
I do recommend reading the two Novellas that come out just before this book. It'll help in the understanding of huge plot events.

Great back story of the wand, Sage is magnificent in this story!! Not to mention the brothers, . . .

Oh My God, though it was a slow beginning - the wicked are truly wicked and the good, well not so good. This is an awesome story ( though the beginning was slower than a snail on a turtle and it’s ending was a huge “HELL YEAH “! My favorite individual is the dean of the university.

This was a great back store and prequal to the Amazing story called, The Black Witch. I really e.joyed this novella !

I started out unsure how I felt about this, but I really ended up loving it. I enjoy the different characters and their races, and I am really looking forward to their adventures in the next book!

I read this book before coming online and seeing all the controversy following it. I want to make this clear - the book is about much more than racism. It’s about a girl raised in a racist society with strong values on feminine oppression whose mindset grows and overcomes it. I’ve seen reviews here and other places that call for the book to be banned because it could be harmful to teens but I completely disagree - pretending that issues like those that occur in this book don’t happen or have never happened will do nothing for our society’s values and beliefs. Laurie Forest gives us a character that many will come to love and a world that every one of us wants her to tear up by its foundation. The Black Witch is a must read with wonderful imagery and descriptions that will have you not wanting to put the book down! 10/10 with a strong recommendation for all!

This book was about a fantasy word full of mythical races. It was about the adventures the main character, Elloren and her multi-racial friends in their rebel resistance. Elloren lost her parents at a young age and lived with her Uncle in Halfix for the last 17 years. Now she goes to university to become and Apothecary just like her dead mother. Elloren looks exactly like her dead powerful grandmother, who was a great warrior in some eyes and a mass murder in others. Elloren hates that her race has taken over so much and killing all the other races and taking their land. She start to rebel and goes the resistance to fight back.

I really enjoyed this book, I just hated that this book ended on a cliffhanger! This book never had any truly boring parts. This book always made me want to read more. Now I just need the 2nd and 3rd books. I would recommend this to anyone you like action, friendship, and revenge themed books. I think that this book is my favorite book I have ever read. It was super exciting, thrilling, and entertaining book. This means a lot coming from me because i get so bored with every book!