The Once and Future Witches
by Alix E. Harrow
Narrated by Gabra Zackman
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
Suffragettes and spell-casting collide in 1893 New Salem, and Gabra Zackman makes every incantation feel like a rallying cry.
- Great if you want: feminist historical fantasy with mythic, emotional weight
- Listening experience: rich and atmospheric — best savored slowly, not binged
- Narration: Zackman differentiates the three sisters with clarity and conviction
- Skip if: dense prose and deliberate pacing lose you after hour two
About This Audiobook
In 1893 New Salem, three estranged sisters, James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna, find each other in the women's suffrage movement and begin recovering the words and ways of an older power, the witch's craft that the burnings nearly erased. As the movement gains momentum, forces that will not suffer women to vote, let alone to wield genuine magic, begin closing in. Alix E. Harrow's novel braids American political history with feminist fantasy with remarkable grace.
Gabra Zackman narrates with a storyteller's sense of myth and the particular fire that Harrow's prose generates when the sisters are together, capturing both the political urgency of the suffrage narrative and the wonder of magic returning to the world. Multiple major awards, including the Locus and British Fantasy awards for best fantasy novel, reflect a book that uses its genre not as escape but as a way of making the past's stakes feel urgent and alive. The audiobook is nearly sixteen hours and rewards every minute.
