All through this book I was wondering what about these books always scratch a very particular itch for me. I think to some degree it’s her use of worldbuilding, which is basically a mix of hard, but delivered in a soft way—meaning the “rules” are present and codified; even have their root in folklore, fairytales, and fiction on the subject; yet are not info dumps and presented in an as-you-need-it manner, consistent with something like, say, Harry Potter. Soft delivery often leads to authors reworking aspects in a kind of ret-con. Again, see HP. But because all the rules here gel and have roots in the cultural consciousness already, it all feels “correct”, somehow.

For instance, when an Owen girl goes missing and another family member worries and wants to find her, someone tells her to bake a pie. The most important ingredient being “love”, which ends up sort of filling the missing person with a kind of home sickness that eventually makes her call. You could easily see that as something steeped in literature and co-opted into Hoffman’s magical cannon. But also just sort of makes sense? The nostalgia of homemade pie in western culture being what it is and the ritual of cooking being mundane, yet somehow also magical, is really enticing to believe in. You want to believe in the worldbuilding as you encounter more of it.

Another The thing I like the most about Hoffman is that her fiction consolidates a lot of mythology around witchcraft and incorporates it into the verisimilitudes of every day life in matter-of-fact terms. Just, by the way, as she does with inclusion of queer characters, it’s unquestioned and in the tides of their lives. This is even more augmented in this book, as it builds on all the previous books. Which makes a lot of sense and actually paints the last book I read, the one where the curse originated in historical fiction rather than contemporary times, in a much better light.

I didn’t like that one as much because I have consumed so many witchy stories set in that era. This incorporates a whole bunch of the family history, which I came to in an odd order (2,3,1,4). Characters established previously arrive, along with their tangled history and “flavour” of magic.

The family curse comes to a head in this conclusion. Family drama meets left-handed magic, ie: dark arts; all while grappling with the curse itself, which the family has been attempting to pretty much trick or circumnavigate for the entirety of their lives, to varying degrees of success and tragedy. This is a very fitting and well balanced ending that felt organic and earned. I will very likely read these all again (in the proper order). I think, for now, The Rules of Magic is still my favourite. But by a short margin.