Half-Witch

June 1, 2018

Gr 7 Up-Fourteen-year-old Lizbet Lenz is used to not getting close to anyone and having to flee in the middle of the night thanks to her father's penchant for getting in over his head. When he gets thrown into jail for causing a rain of mice it's up to Lizbet to rescue him by scaling mountains everyone claims are impassable. As she travels, she gains a companion in Strix, a witch who doesn't believe in friendship but looks out for Lizbet as she gets into trouble. This fantasy adventure has strong spiritual undertones, where God is not a distant unreachable figure, but someone who people can have a conversation with when they take Communion. Lizbet wrestles with her religious views as she is propelled into a world of goblins and demons in order to free her father and stop herself from being sent to an orphanage. The world feels like an antiquated version of our own-albeit with magic-though the exact time period is not clearly defined. Almost every movement made by Lizbet and Strix gets them into some kind of difficulty, which maintains a quick-paced plot and the threat of danger around every corner. Characters are initially childish in their beliefs and stubborn when those beliefs come into question. However, both Lizbet and Strix manage to grow over the course of the narrative. VERDICT An additional purchase for YA collections where adventure novels are widely read.-Rebecca Greer, Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative, FL

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Starred review from May 1, 2018
Even a fantasy world strictly conforming to medieval Christian cosmology cannot withstand an unlikely friendship between human and witch in a picaresque middle-grade debut. After 14 years fleeing across the Holy Roman Empire, Lizbet Lenz has learned to avoid attachments. Yet when her ne'er-do-well father finally lands in jail, she's ready to beg help from anyone: margraves, witches, God (with whom she has regular, literal, if one-sided conversations). Only Strix, a witch girl crafted from leaves and rubbish, is willing to aid Lizbet's desperate venture across the impassable Montagnes du Monde; unfortunately, that assistance may be turning Lizbet herself into a witch. In this wildly imaginative alternative Europe, the delicately evolving relationship between kindhearted, pious, fiercely determined, and achingly lonely Lizbet ("fair-skinned, like most northern folk") and surly, bellicose, but resourceful Strix ("the brown of autumn leaves") provides a sweet counterpoint to a tale otherwise teeming with selfishness, violence, and cruelty, where even heaven fails before the legions of hell. This last plotline, played at first for mordant (and potentially blasphemous) humor, subtly coalesces all the seemingly unrelated episodes until they suddenly transmogrify into a climax that's genuinely thrilling, unexpectedly poignant, and oddly reverent. As Lizbet and Strix together realize their individual identities and agency, even greater joint adventures beckon.Not for everyone, but readers who appreciate powerful female friendships and sui generis whimsy will cherish it. (Fantasy. 10-16)

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