Weekly Reader: Miss Mabel's School For Girls (Book One in The Network School) by Katie Cross; Dark Fantasy About Magical Girl's School is Spooky and Spectacular

 

Weekly Reader: Miss Mabel's School For Girls (Book One in The Network School) by Katie Cross; Dark Fantasy About Magical Girl's School is Spooky and Spectacular

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Okay, I admit it. As much as I love most books and other works about witches and other magic users, I am not nor have I ever been a big fan of the Harry Potter Series. I recognize J.K. Rowling's attention to world building, the influence on getting kids to enjoy reading, and the impact that it had and continues to have on Children's Literature and the Fantasy Genre. 

However, personally I never cared that much for the series itself. I find Harry Potter himself the worst kind of Chosen One insufferable lead, a Gary Stu. The other characters are mostly flat and the dimensions that they possess happen too late for me to really care. The series falls to the standard good vs. evil conflict without much gray area interest. It calls back to the late 19th early 20th century of the so-called Golden Age of English Literature in terms of structure and subtle themes of classicism, racism, and adherence to traditional gender roles.

Many of the plot points are predictable and even some of the twists were obvious. Even the idea of a school of witches and wizards had been used before in works like The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy. When it comes down to it, the Harry Potter series wasn't any better written than the OZ series.

Not only that, but I found the publicity and media attention to be overblown, making what I found to be an average series at best overrated. (I'm the contrary sort that the more you tell me that I am supposed to like something the more I will dislike it to the point of hating it.) Worst of all, the single minded attention to Harry Potter overshadowed other books that were also about witches, wizards, and magic users that were better in quality that came out around the time but not near as well known and certainly deserved even some of the publicity that Potter got. Books like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke which was one of my favorite fantasy books during the Aughts.

Another of the books which has similar ideas to Harry Potter but is also better written is Katie Cross' Miss Mabel's School For Girls. It has a better plot, characters, and is less defined in its themes of recognizing darkness in others and recognizing power and darkness in oneself.

16 year old, Bianca Monroe gets accepted to the prestigious Miss Mabel's School For Girls, a boarding school for young witches. It is one of the most notable schools in The Network, a sockety of witches and other magic users with their own government, schools, society, economic structure and so on. 

Bianca makes friends with fellow first years, Camille and Leda and gets the attention of instructors like Miss Bernadette, Miss Scarlet and Miss Celia. When a competition comes for third years only, Bianca raises her hand. She doesn't want to show off her abilities, though they are impressive. She wants to face Miss Mabel, the headmistress. Mabel put a curse on Bianca's family years ago and she wants the curse either removed by Mabel voluntarily or by her death.

Bianca is no Harry Potter. She is not stunned and amazed by this new world where she is propped up as a prophecized hero since she was a baby simply by surviving. She knows about The Network. She is experienced and even cynical about the way the magical world works. 

For lack of a better world, Bianca was home schooled by her father to practice magic. He also teaches her to suppress her thoughts and knowledge so the treacherous Miss Mabel doesn't catch on. She is even told to suppress the magic that she learned outside of school so she can act like the average student and no one knows where or from whom she learned her powers. During her education, Bianca behaves like a spy in enemy territory being a good student but always knowing that the enemy is within.

While the Harry Potter series gets progressively darker, the older the kids get and the more the series continues, the darkness in Miss Mabel's School For Girls is present from the beginning. Many characters pay a terrible price for using and specializing in magic. Leda, Bianca's friend, has precognitive abilities but they make her so physically ill that she prefers to be alone rather than inadvertently reveal a future that someone doesn't want to know.

Many of the tests in the competition are meant to bring out the more sinister side to the characters. Even the smallest assignments like finding the student's individual butterfly comes with the caveat not to trust anyone or anything. The participants have to face their deepest fears and go through psychological torture to move ahead in the competition. 

One of the final tests puts the young witches through a personal physical and mental pain that will only be recalled if the witch withdraws from the competition. The test and results reveal a lot about Bianca and the other participants, what's most important to them, and what drives them to succeed.

Instead of Hogwarts which appears to be a kid's wish fulfillment where Readers long to visit,Miss Mabel's School For Girls should come with a warning: Enter at Your Own Risk. Warning: Physical and Mental Side Effects May Occur.

When Bianca finally gets some alone time with Miss Mabel, it becomes a one on one battle. Bianca has to use all of her self taught magic, love of her family, and desire to end this painful and destructive curse to face Mabel who has power, influence, and a strong ambition to be at the top of the Network. 

Mabel gives off this impression of being a stern but loving leader and headmistress to young witches. However, she has a ruthless cunning nature that destroys anyone who dares oppose or disagree with her. 

To fight against her, Bianca has to be ruthless, cunning, and duplicitous and hide that nature. To face that darkness in Miss Mabel, Bianca has to find that darkness in herself. It takes her one book to learn what it took Harry seven (and eight movies). 

While some could call Miss Mabel's School For Girls, a Harry Potter knockoff, it is less concrete, deals less with absolutes of black and white, and contains less of the old school Golden Age of Literature structure disguised as a new experience. Miss Mabel's has the nuances in character and plot development and shades of gray that Rowling's franchise lacks.

Weekly Reader: A Spell in The Country by Heide Goody and Iain Grant; Wonderful Witty Web of Witches Weighs The Terms "Good" and "Wicked"

 

Weekly Reader: A Spell in The Country by Heide Goody and Iain Grant; Wonderful Witty Web of Witches Weighs The Terms "Good" and "Wicked"

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: For obvious reasons, I have always been drawn to witches both real and fictional. Once I got over my childhood fear of Halloween, images and stories of witches fascinated me such as the arrival of Glinda The Good Witch of the North and Elphaba The Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of OZ, the animated sequence when The Wicked Queen turns into the elderly peddler in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the various fairy tale collections filled with memorably magical female characters. I collect Halloween witch figures and memorabilia and keep them in my room all year round. When I read fantasies, my favorite characters are always the magic users: fairies, sorcerers, sorceresses, witches, wizards, mages, clerics, Jedi etc. Many times if a book is about a witch or a magic user, I will give it a read. (Oddly enough, even though I love novels about witches, I am not a fan of  Harry Potter. I will explain why in a future review.) 

The Witch has been an archetype that has been a huge part of my life and since 2002 (wow almost 20 years!) I have walked that path as a Solitary Wiccan. 

Right now I am paying tribute to this archetype by reviewing six books about witches. Three reviews have been completed: The Mind Witch by Nicole Demery, Mother: A Mother Gothel Tale Witches of Grimm by C.M. Adler, and Tales From The Hinterland by Melissa Albert. There are three more on my list that pay tribute to these wonderful magical characters.

The latest of my witchy reviews is A Spell in The Country by Heide Goody and Iain Grant. It's a strange combination of fantasy about a coven of witches learning about their history and power and workplace/friend sitcom about different types of women living and working together while tolerating each other's personalities and oddities. A Spell in the Country also plays on the concepts of "good" and "wicked" and finds that the terms are mere constructs and are fuzzier than many think that they are.

The main three witches that we are introduced sit on different sides of the good vs. evil fence. Dee Finch considers herself not only a morally good witch but good at what she does. She works at the Shelter for Unloved Animals and is always ready to help others both human and animal. She uses her magic to transform potions and repair things, adding a magical touch to the ordinary.

Caroline Black hovers on neutral but in her words "(she) is an awesome witch!" A server, she has the gift of glamour both in attractiveness and manipulation. She is able to control others' thoughts to get them to do anything she wants. (However, as she notes, being a hedge witch cannot necessarily make you a hedge trader and being an awesome witch does not pay the bills, hence working at a cafe.) 

Jenny Knott, who is between jobs, is a wicked witch but as she notes, not by choice. She resists all wicked traits, such as suppressing her urge to use spells for hexes and curses. She however has Jizzimus, an annoying sex crazed imp who serves as her familiar. 

The three women are invited to go to the country for a series of courses in which they will become acquainted with other women of their kind and learn how to use their abilities on a larger scale.

In the country, the trio encounter other witches including: Effie, the former Flower Child turned course leader whose wardrobe choices reveals that she is still stuck in the '60's, Norma, the crotchety older member of the group, Shazam, a dizzy younger member who gets all of her information from the Internet and social media, Sabrina, the latest in a magic using family, Kay, a runaway teen rescued by Jenny and Dee, and Natasha, the course founder who spends more time running her spa and beauty product empire than being a witch.

The motley crew of witches are a fascinating bunch as they navigate their way through their lessons and learn to get along with each other. The structure of the book is similar to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book in which there are various subplots spread throughout the book but each chapter reads like a short story with separate assignments that lead to a beginning, middle, and end. 

The adventures are exciting and humorous as the gang use their powers in various tasks and assignments. These assignments make the characters stand out in wonderfully witty and wickedly funny ways.

Their first assignment, to locate a hidden magical amulet, gives Jenny the advantage by finding it. But she also earns Effie's dislike for finding it by herself since part of the assignment was to work with her teammates, Dee and Caroline, to locate it.

Another assignment involves the witches creating a product to sell by using magic, so witchcraft can benefit the women financially. (After all, as Effie points out, witches are often called on to help sell products. Silicon Valley has its own tech savvy coven and what about that "Secret" blend of eleven herbs and spices?) Many of their products go humorously awry. Shazam's hair tonic has very hairy animalistic results and gets in the way of a love triangle between Caroline, Jenny, and a handsome handyman, George.

Even a day off produces some interesting trouble. In her desire to discover wicked witches, Dee practices with Norma, a seasoned veteran in the battle against such witches. They create and bring to life a dummy with the "heart stopping and chilling" name of Lesley-Ann Faulkner. ("It's a name," Dee diplomatically says after Norma eschews traditional names like Elphaba or Bellatrix and favors the Faulkner moniker. "It's definitely a name.").

 Lesley-Ann gets loose and interferes with Jenny and Jizzimus trying to exorcise a ghostly presence in the water and Caroline trying to show Kay how to win friends and manipulate people.

Despite the spell casting shenanigans, the plot veers towards the dark and disturbing as we get to the heart of a conspiracy involving some of the characters. It comes to light that Kay, who up until then was just an innocent bystander playing along with her new older friends' witchly ways, is more involved with the magical arts than many of them suspected. 

Various characters' motives and true characters are revealed and called into question. We find that characters who were thought to be good are the worst kind of wicked and those believed to be wicked are the most morally upstanding. Each character turns out to be more than originally perceived and much deeper and richer through the writing.

A Spell in the Country is a wonderful witch of a book. It is definitely worth sitting down for a spell and becoming enchanted by the great writing and bewitching characters.