Best for:
People looking for magical worlds set in contemporary time, without supporting, say, anti-trans authors.

In a nutshell:
Witches are real, and there is a prophesy that a newly discovered teen, Theo, might bring about something very, very bad. A group of friends who were young witches together and have now followed different paths all become involved in addressing this.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I believe this was the last book I received before I ended a book subscription.

What it left me feeling:
Excited for the second in the series.

Review:
SPOILERS. CN for anti-trans words and actions, violence, war.

Spoilers because I can’t talk about most of the main points of the book without spoiling something that doesn’t happen until maybe 1/3 of the way through.

This book is set in modern times in the UK. HMRC is the initialism for Her (now His) Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, so it’s fun that the author is suggesting that HMRC also stands for Her Majesty’s Royal Coven. As an aside, I wonder if the next book will call it His Majesty’s Royal Coven? Anyway, the point is the book is set in the UK, and there are witches.

Helena, Niamh, Ciara, Elle and Leonie grew up together and discovered they were witches when they were young. Flash forward, and a great war has happened (where Ciara was on the wrong side, and is now permanently unconscious thanks to actions by her sister Niamh), involving all the witches and warlocks. In this world, witches are the more powerful - no warlock could be as powerful as a witch. And yet a teen boy Theo appears and is more powerful that pretty much any witch, and appears to be part of a prophesy that will result in a lot of very bad things. He doesn’t talk, he is scared, and Helena - who is now head of HMRC - asks her friend Niamh - who has left HMRC and works as a veterinarian - to take Theo in while they try to figure what to do.

Here’s where the spoilers come in - Niamh also takes in Elle’s daughter Holly to help train her now that she has learned she is a witch, and Theo comes out to Holly as trans. Which explains how Theo could be so powerful - she’s not a warlock, she’s a witch! Niamh and Holly are super supportive, but Helena is not. Helena is for sure a TERF, and from then on things get rough between the friend group.

Leonie is the only member of the friend group who is Black, and also the only one who is a lesbian. She left HMRC to form her own coven for witches who are Black and women of color so they have a place to be safe from the racism of white women. I think that part is well done and really interesting to read, but I appreciate some reviews I read that feel like Leonie is tasked with taking on too much representation (why are all the other witches in the friend group straight and white?), and her storyline sometimes feels a bit shoehorned in. That said, I think Leonie was my favorite character after Niamh, and part of that is probably because we spend much more time with Niamh.

The author of the book is a trans woman herself, and I’d imagine writing this book was a bit cathartic for her, given how shitty so many alleged feminist white women are to trans women in the UK right now. The reason the book for me is only three stars is that the writing is a bit … underdeveloped? Like, I wasn’t sure for awhile if I was reading a YA book. The chapters are all very short, and are from different character perspectives, which is a device I quite like, but needed a bit more refinement I think. That said, the ending was a full on gut punch, and I’m super looking forward to the sequel, which comes out this summer.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it ( )

I think the serious downside to giving a Villain a pov is that it forces you to take in more of the absolute vitriol that is their thought processes. When you have a terf of a villian like this, it’s becomes much hate spewing to willingly swallow even for the sake of plot or plot justifications. I don’t particularly enjoy the fact that Theo accepting their identify and deciding to live the way she wants is the main fulcrum between evil or not evil.

That aside I feel like too much is told to you and not enough is seen. I don’t understand the girls loyalty to each other when the antagonist is always an asshole? I don’t like that going into book one makes you feel like someone forgot to give you the prequel and just tossed you into the middle.

Also don’t get my started on the emphasis of “since the war” I spent more than half the book trying to figure out of this was a contemporary fiction… or if the timing was supposed to be closer to WW2? I don’t think it should have taken more than 50% of the way to finally get an explanation…. And the explanation we got was severely lacking the actually details, yet again.

Oh and last grump here…. What’s the point of an oracle if they only see the fake future and not the antagonist going full evil and getting into bed with demons and going against the coven?? Like NO ONE for saw that except Annie who said diddly squat? ( )

Oh dear, it's happened again. I've read a book that has me disgusted with the vitriol of the trans-supportive community. I thought Her Majesty's Royal Coven would be an enjoyable book about witches and alternative history. Her majesty's royal coven was established by Queen Elizabeth and is active in Britain today. Fun and interesting with different witches with differing talents expressing them in their own personal ways. If the book stopped at this I would recommend it to anyone, but no. Instead, it seems to be an attack on anyone who has doubts about the reasonableness of letting children determine the course of their entire lives in the guise of the most appealing and innocent transgender girl and a narcissistic, irrational woman who wants to keep men out of her coven. Surprise, the woman says things that could have come right out of J. K. Rowling's mouth. Even more surprising, even horrifying to me, was the ending of the book. How can people who pretend to honor equality spew such hatred into the world? I feel that the stance of transgender supporters seems to be that people who disagree with their stance are not only wrong but that they are evil and deserve any bad thing that can happen to them. Is my understanding of history wrong, or is this attitude unique in this particular fight for "equality?" Has our thinking become so black and white that there is no room for tolerance or humanity? ( )

I enjoyed this book very much for its detailed world building and another new take on magic. I also enjoyed this book for what it has to say about how we define ourselves and how people with limited world views can harm society. The author is frustrated by narrow mindedness and so am I. This book was cathartic for me. ( )

Helena is the High Priestess of Her Majesty's Royal Coven, the only government-sanctioned coven in the UK. Niamh, once a teacher of young witches, has retired to work as a vet. Leonie has defected to start her own coven, where non-white witches can support each other and celebrate the diversity HMRC seems to inadequately support. Elle just wants to be a wife and mother, a witch in name only. All four started as childhood friends and see themselves as sisters in witchcraft, but they haven't truly worked together since the war that claimed the lives of Helena's husband and Niamh's fiancé, a war that pushed them into violent acts that none of them have forgotten. They have separate goals and separate lives, but when Elle's daughter turns out to be a witch, threatening the secrets she's kept from her husband, Niamh takes a new and frighteningly powerful charge under her wing, and oracles start warning Helena that this teenage child will cause a demon to destroy them all, all four face some difficult decisions. Where will they stand? What will they do? And how far will they go to protect what they love?

This fantasy novel, told in rotating perspectives, sets up a world much like ours, except that witches are said to have always been behind the scenes in secret. Or, at times, not so secret. From historical witch trials to events as modern as the coronavirus pandemic, witches are said to have been active and playing a role, for better or for worse. Oracles warned of the pandemic and were listened to or not. Charles Manson was apparently a warlock who believed those with magical powers should rule over those without. The witches we follow grew up loving the Spice Girls and make pop culture references freely.

More importantly for the plot, they grapple with contemporary prejudices. All have strong feelings about feminism and the importance of sisterhood, but cracks between them grow when Leonie expresses the need for changes in response to racism, and lines are drawn when the young "warlock" Niamh has taken in turns out to be transgender. And when witches fight, oh boy does it get messy. You can certainly expect a lot of magic-packed action scenes.

There are also sex scenes, along with relationship troubles and parenting difficulties and, in the case of one couple, hesitation about whether to become parents. Many women, I think, would find at least one of these characters to be relatable, and the book may have a deeper appeal for them than it did for my perpetually single, child-free self (besides which don't know much about the Spice Girls... and there were a lot of references to the Spice Girls). I also imagine many people would be less put off by the amount of casual swearing, including calling each other by a few choice words.

I did, however, love the character of Theo (the transgender teen), and the plot was engaging enough to keep me going, especially towards the end. I was a little disappointed in the ending, as it seemed to pile on the drama just to set up for the sequel, but I still think the book would be quite enjoyable to those who love a good fantasy with this sort of plotline and/or relate more strongly to one of the main characters than I did. If the concept is intriguing to you, you'll likely have a good, fun read. ( )