Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from the publisher in exchange for a review.

An intriguing coming-of-age fantasy story following a trans girl who disguises herself as a witch apprentice to find a way to get out of her small town, live as a woman and fulfill her best friend’s duty of having to apprentice as a witch herself, as she was promised to the coven before her birth. I quite enjoyed this switch of the fantasy trope of women (and sometimes rarely trans men) crossdressing to join a powerful male occupation (warriors or sailors etc) and so was really excited to see how this story would proceed.
This novel is both relatively heavy on world building (as we learn alongside Laurel, it manages to draw me into the story well and doesn’t feel like we’re being infodumped at) and yet leaves many questions still unanswered. This is certainly as this is only the first book in a trilogy, but it did leave me a bit unsatisfied, as I would have liked to learn more about the world. It does, however, also leave me incredibly interested to learn more about the world in the sequel and what we have learned so far is well thought out and interesting. Laurel’s personal coming-of-age character development as well as her finally becoming accepted as a girl coincides with a dangerous blight infecting the lands, destroying forests and leading to the appearance of monsters in the forests and so despite being a very new apprentice Laurel soon finds herself embroiled in dangerous battles.
Since Laurel lives stealth (deeply aware of the dangers of being found of for her and the way her body places her in danger) it takes a while for her transness to become a bigger plot point and when it does, she obviously faces some transphobia. I did enjoy that it is often balanced with solidarity between cis women and trans women and that Laurel finds an accepting community. My favorite part of the story was the examination of the magic transition trope and that the story allows room for different transition goals for different people, which is something I often miss in stories that allow for magic transitions.
I would like to provide a trigger warning that while this book avoids the common tropes of trans people being discovered while changing (avoided as Laurel is very, very careful and it does hurt to read about how hard it can be) or being forcibly stripped, the story does feature two scenes where Laurel falls unconscious and other people realize she is trans at these points due to wardrobe malfunctions. While I think it is handled well and Laurel is never assaulted or has to deal with other common violent tropes around one’s transness being discovered, I still felt a bit uncomfortable with these scenes and so just wanted to mention that they exist.
[Spoilers] My one critique point of the story lays in how Araneigh deals with Laurel’s transness. While I don’t mind her having a negative/uneducated opinion at first, I wish the story had shown how she changed her mind towards the end. This happened too fast and out of the left-field for me and I wish we had either seen Laurel talk to her or for Laurel to overhear somebody else talking to her. This was a bit fast for me and felt unrealistic and also ties in to my main issue that is Laurel never fully getting to stand up for her identity herself. While I enjoy that Laurel needs to find her own way to her identity and also spends quite a bit of the book figuring out her own goals for her transition, I wish she would have been given a change to verbalize it to others, even though I also understand the appeal of being accepted and loved without constantly having to fight and beg for it [End Spoilers]
Another part I really enjoyed is the way anarchist ideals flow throughout the story and influence the actions and opinions of many characters. It fits well with the few short stories I have read by Margaret Killjoy and so while I was hoping for it, I still found myself really enjoying the way it was implemented in this story.
All in all, this is another lovely addition to trans witch stories and I would advise it to any fan of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea or fans of anarchist fantasy (this Venn diagram might be a circle though :D).

tw: accidental outing, blackmail, bullying, misgendering, violence, death, environmental disasters, animal death