Book of Shadows

As Morgan continues to learn about Wicca we find out that she is a "blood witch", someone born to a line of witches stretching back far into the past. Since she is she has tremendous powers but at first she has no clue to what is happening. She tends to get sick at first but as she learns more she is able to control her abilities.

She's also strongly attracted to Cal, but so is her best friend Bree and that's one of the sources of conflict in the story. Another source of conflict is the extremely strong objection her parents have to her studying Wicca, the reason for which becomes clear late in the book.

The novel is really good in most aspects, especially in the psychological difficulties Morgan is having adjusting to the fact that she may be something quite out of the ordinary. Her conflict with her parents and her best friend are also well done and make sense. At the end of the novel we know that she has an idea what she is, but we have no idea what she plans to do with her abilities although we are given a clue when she makes a potion to help a boy cure his extremely bad case of acne. She might end up being a healer, but we don't know for sure.

I did have a few problems with the story, though. The first is when Cal invites the students to a circle. It's possible that where she lives the thinking is more open than here, but if a student here invited a bunch of other students somewhere and they ended up at a Wiccan circle there would be very severe problems indeed. The student would instantly earn a lot of enemies; when the kids told their parents he would be in trouble, and when the word got through the school it's very likely that he would be reprimanded if not suspended.

The second is pretty minor. The students go to Cal's house and he has an outdoor heated swimming pool. Since they had not planned originally to go swimming they end up taking their clothes off and swim naked (except for Morgan). I think that's highly unreal; I don't see a group of boys and girls going to a swimming pool, even if it is at a private home, and taking all their clothes off in order to swim. Even though they did nothing at all sexually with each other the whole scene just strikes me as very unlikely to happen.

If you are one of the people who think Wicca is an evil thing then you should not read this book or any others along the line. It would just get you angry.

There is some explanation of what Wicca is in the book. Wicca is basically a spiritual system based on the use of magic along with herbs and crystals (sort of New Age-type things). Wiccans do not worship any demonic being; they are more Goddess-oriented than anything. True Wiccans work to help others (as Morgan did in healing the boy of his acne). One thing that helps that alone is the Threefold Law.

In true Wicca, there is a law that says whatever you do comes back to you threefold so, if you decide you want to hurt someone using your magical abilities then you can be pretty sure that three times the strength of whatever you do to the other person will come back to you and hurt you.

The third problem I have is Cal's inviting a group to a circle. (A circle is something found in various spiritual systems. In a Native American type pipe ceremony you offer a pipe to the various directions, thus forming a circle. In Wicca, it is used to help raise power for group work, usually involving sending healing energies to someone. You can even find actual circles of stones like in Stonehenge, although no one is really sure exactly how these circles were used.

Wicca is not a spiritual system which openly seeks converts. Since it is usually misunderstood and since being a witch (male or female) can get a person in a whole lot of trouble if other people find out, Wiccans are very careful who they invite to become involved in their form of spiritual work, so I don't see Cal, who is a witch, inviting an entire group to a circle, especially not knowing in advance how the students feel about Wicca.

Granted, it would have lengthened the novel tremendously to have Cal take the time to sound out various students, determine which would be open to that form of spiritual activity and then inviting them to a circle. He would probably not even invite them to a circle at first but to some form of small group meetings where they could learn more about Wicca and decide if they want to become involved in it at all. This is the single most unrealistic thing in the entire novel.

Still, the overall story is good and I will be reading more novels in the series.

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