Summer Reading Project, BookLikes Satellite

I have to describe The Gallows Curse, by Karen Maitland, as both historical fiction and historical fantasy. The more I read of Maitland’s work, the more I wonder about a medieval world where magic was real. Everything else I’ve learned about the time period—the extreme violence, the power of the church, the lingering pagan practices, and so on—make it seem so alien from the modern world that magic is not the hardest thing to accept about medieval life. The Gallows Curse opens with a prologue in which a man comes to a witch seeking revenge for his daughter. The man, however, lied to the witch about why he wanted the poison. When the witch is convicted and sentenced to die (horribly), she curses the man’s family. The novel is the story of how that curse plays out for the next generation, even as King John is chasing French agents all over England and traitors are everywhere...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.