Blood Coven, by Sabrina Voerman, is one of those literary adaptations that got me to run to my library to check out the original source material. And when I did read the Grimm Brothers' short story, “Little Red Cap,” I could see (as I never had before) the underlying message—“Do as you're told. Stay in your place.”
Voerman's Blood Coven does what every great literary adaptation should do: make you feel and think.
“With Alina by her side, Red felt safe for the first time in her life. ‘I was told never to stray in fear of what lurked in the woods,’ she thought, ‘but what lurks outside these woods is far scarier.’ She suspected that unity between girls was a frightening thought to the men who ran the town.”
Blood Coven is the richest, most immersive and engrossing fantasy novel I've read in a very long time. I grew up reading Fantasy (the works of Le Guin, Lewis, McCaffrey, Weis, Donaldson, and Brooks, among others). The works of these writers were like companions to me—guides even—helping me to navigate childhood and adolescence in a chaotic world. I followed their characters who cut against the grain, who chose to leave the paths defined for them, protagonists who sought something more than what had been planned for them at birth. Against the odds, these characters discovered for themselves the magic that existed beyond the veil of life's demand for conformity. Then something happened: fantasy novels became less about the people and the mysteries of magic as a metaphor and more about magic systems and world building. For me, reading fantasy novels began feeling more like reading college algebra workbooks, with their strict formulas and rules, than an escape into wonder. It was as if mainstream fantasy was trying too much to be like "hard" science fiction. I left the genre for a long time.
Blood Coven has brought me back.
The novel opens with magic—dark magic—a curse; and from there, we are introduced to a world that is dark and foreboding, seemingly destined to exist in the twilight folds between wakefulness and nightmare. It's a world inhabited by wonderfully-drawn characters we might somehow recognize within ourselves and living within our own communities. Many of the characters grapple to tame a magic as mysterious as the complex web of relationships that undergird Voerman's story.
The structure of the novel was a bit disorienting at first, as the narrative is told from multiple perspectives and between two time periods, 400 years apart. But by the fifth chapter, my feet were firmly planted in the muds of Ocleau and Silvania and I was totally absorbed by the tale that was revealing itself, one of witches and werewolves and seemingly perpetual night. There is magic connecting the two villages we navigate through, a magic much more about people and relationships than about the details of spell-casting. Voerman does not treat magic as if it were a banal scientific phenomenon to cleverly dissect, but instead offers it as something as mysterious and beautiful and frightening as the love between our two protagonists, a love that will fill and break your heart.
This is a very Gothic story—though not grimdark—as there is a familiar, relatable humanity (both good and bad) in all of Voerman's characters; it is a humanity that points in the direction of a hopefulness that defies contemporary conventions.
Blood Coven is a novel that makes me want to read more books by Sabrina Voerman. And we are lucky, as the title page announces that Blood Coven is Book 1 of a series. I am excited by what Quill & Crow is doing in the fantasy space. Blood Coven moved me to tears sadness and great joy, and now I can't wait for the release of Book 2 of The Blood Bound series that makes me feel so deeply, as well as think.
(Blood Coven is currently available for Pre-order and will be released on September 13th)
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Have a wonderful week.
—Cedrick