Arts & Culture

Caged and Dissected: The Witch Hunt Politics of “Thorn Season”

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“‘Shadow and Bone meets The Selection,'” the marketing promises, banking on glittering courts and will-they-won’t-they tension,” writes Beatrix Kondo in her analysis of the romantasy sensation. “What the book actually delivers is something else entirely—the first chapters of a feminist high fantasy saga with a queer and Pagan reading.”

Arts & Culture

The Witch Who Was Always Near

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“A story set in Near becomes a mirror,” writes Beatrix Kondo, exploring folklore, fear, and the familiar stranger in V.E. Schwab’s novel “The Near Witch.” “What the mirror reflects is a community organized around the strategic management of its own fear.”