This is a debut queer fantasy novel that features a unique protagonist, a girl who is literally made up of the titular elements of hawthorn and glass! Eli was created by Circinae, a harsh indifferent witch who raised her out of callous self-interest to serve as an assassin and raise her standing with the Coven. When Eli is stranded in the human world after a mission goes wrong, she reluctantly teams up with a couple of humans in order to return to her home in the magical City of Eyes. Of course nothing ever goes according to plan, and Eli is quickly swept up in a dangerous adventure, which leads her to explore new friendships, old heartaches, conflicted loyalties, and what she truly stands for.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass has a lot of exciting elements; the idea magical world overlaid over our mundane human world with witches running secret missions is intriguing and the teenage assassin trope is very popular so this is sure to get a lot of attention. The main strength of this novel is the diversity on show with all its major characters being queer, plus Cam is East Asian and Tav is a nonbinary Black person. Anyone who is in search of books with POC and LGBT+ representation will be well-satisfied. The author’s note at the beginning is heartfelt and moving, and I applaud their aim to publish a novel that is inclusive and helps people of different backgrounds to feel seen.
It’s so important to have diverse representation and I’m especially drawn to queer speculative fiction where the character’s orientation is incidental to their story arc, so this should have been a hit. Unfortunately the fact that this is a debut novel was inescapable because it felt like the author had bitten off more than they could chew. The characters are the best part of the story, and even that is imperfectly pulled off – for instance, Eli’s character is meant to be this perfect assassin who is feted by the Coven as a ‘superior weapon’ and the best of the best, but we rarely see these abilities in action. Eli talks the talk, but in action scenes, it’s often the feeble humans who are protecting her!
Tav and Cam are fascinating characters, but sadly they are given hardly any backstory or depth, so while they endear themselves to the reader on the basis of charm and banter, there’s nothing to grasp onto when you start to ponder their goals and motivations. We have no idea what’s actually driving them to blindly embark on a dangerous journey with no clear plan and zero preparation. Although it’s a mystery to Eli for half of the book, the blurb gives away that their mission in the City of Eyes is to steal the Heart of the Coven, but it’s never explained to the reader just what the Heart is or how it can be used to achieve whatever it is they want. And even once all the characters are on board with this plan, there’s still no discussion of how to successfully abscond with what is clearly the most prized possession of the Coven and certain to be securely guarded.
This leads onto the next issue which is the structural weakness of this story. There’s so many interesting ideas, but they don’t coalesce into a coherent whole and instead the book has an identity crisis. If it’s meant to be an adventure story, it lacks the fast-paced action because the frequent flashbacks slow the pace to a crawl in some parts as we jump back in time to a scene in Eli’s childhood or a moment with her former best friend/ex-girlfriend. If it’s meant to be a heist story, half the fun of those is seeing our heroes bond over planning the details of the heist in question rather than skipping past all that. And the villains are clearly meant to be the Coven, but we’re never even properly introduced to them. So how can we know what our intrepid heroes are facing? Instead we end up with a bunch of random sub-plots that meander aimlessly towards a confusing finale rather than a build-up of tension and excitement over a defined conflict with understandable stakes.
The shaky worldbuilding means that it’s difficult for the reader to lose themselves in the delightful premise of witches, ghosts, and assassins because the details are so thinly sketched that it leads to confusion and apathy. Who are the creepy kids in the Children’s Lair? Are they born from witches or a separate group? How do the Labyrinth, the Maze and the Lair fit into the City of Eyes? And a few times, Eli is able to magically transport from one point to another, except for when it’s necessary for the plot that she is stranded somewhere, but we aren’t given a reason why this happens. There are no rules and nothing has meaning, which makes it hard to invest in the narrative.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass has a lot of potential, but flounders in the execution. Worth checking out for its diverse characters and unique, striking concepts, but hopefully the sequel spends more time developing the other main characters and pulling together a more coherent storyline.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Even teenage assassins have dreams.
Eli isn’t just a teenage girl — she’s a made-thing the witches created to hunt down ghosts in the human world. Trained to kill with her seven magical blades, Eli is a flawless machine, a deadly assassin. But when an assignment goes wrong, Eli starts to question everything she was taught about both worlds, the Coven, and her tyrannical witch-mother.
Worried that she’ll be unmade for her mistake, Eli gets caught up with a group of human and witch renegades, and is given the most difficult and dangerous task in the worlds: capture the Heart of the Coven. With the help of two humans, one motorcycle, and a girl who smells like the sea, Eli is going to get answers — and earn her freedom.
