THE COVEN TENDENCY

A lonely teen witch longs for true connection.

For the witches kept like zoo animals in the Museum, on display for the City tourists who can afford entry to the lavish weekly Parties, life feels hopeless. Monroe Athalia, the Museum’s Curator, owns three witch families—the Adamses, the Kims, and the Raos. The adults are Spectacles, performing rites for patrons. Meanwhile, their children’s magical powers are stripped away by the Machine to avoid any dangerous mishaps due to their unbalanced teenage natures. Other witches are taken to the Sanatorium, where they’re kept comatose—their magic harvested to make the drug World, which is popular in the City, a setting with a European feeling. Despite a ban on fraternizing, Vanity Adams spends her days seeking Ellis Kim and Clover Rao, the other young witches, commiserating over each failure with her vicious twin sister, Ro. When Vanity and Ellis finally do connect, Vanity’s reality spirals in terrifying ways. The story’s time skips and Vanity’s rambling narration make for a difficult reading experience that requires readers to suspend disbelief; however, Vanity’s sense of self and her dramatic depiction of love and toxic relationships are multifaceted and grounding. Similarly, the discussions of drugs, addiction, death, and generational cycles of violence add a grim reality to the fantastical plot. Monroe and Vanity are from the country of Miyeon, which reads fantasy–East Asian; biracial Vanity is half Clara (fantasy-white). Ellis and Clover are cued fantasy-Asian.

A disturbingly compelling fever dream.