The Sapling Cage
A Novel
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4.7 • 15 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the gripping first novel in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy, author Margaret Killjoy spins a tale of earth magic, power struggle, and self-invention in an own-voices story of trans witchcraft.
Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch: learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy.
When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the kingdom: a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Killjoy (Escape from Incel Island) gender-bends an old-fashioned fantasy of witches, knights, and brigands in the intriguing if uneven first book of her Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy. A rot called the colddead decimates the forests of Cekon, bringing famine and unrest, and it's up to an ancient order of witches to stop it. But armies of knights allied to the ruthless Duchess Helte, who covets Cekon's vacant throne, spread malicious rumors that the witches are to blame for the blight and begin a merciless hunt that threatens to ruin Mother's May, the springtime holiday when witches go door-to-door gathering new "whelps" to train in the arts of war, diplomacy, and magic. Trans teen Lorel yearns to join the Order but worries the sex she was assigned at birth will prevent her. When the order comes for her best friend, Lane, Lorel dons Lane's clothes and takes her place. Petrified the coven will discover her secret, Lorel keeps her distance from her peers as the witches, favoring weapons over spells, train the whelps to fight and unravel the mystery of the colddead. Killjoy conjures an abundance of song and ritual as this sacred order fights for its survival, but the sword-clashing muffles Lorel's inner turmoil, making it hard to connect to this swashbuckling story on an emotional level. Still, there's plenty of potential here.
Customer Reviews
Magic with Meaning
I feel like the fantasy genre has exploded the past few decades, and while there are many dazzling, lovingly-crafted worlds and magic systems out there, many of them feel lacking to me. This book made me realize why.
Magic here isn’t just window dressing for a swashbuckling adventure: the system IS the metaphor that drives the core theme of the novel. This book has a real message to impart about the way we grow weary, and lax, and greedy, and go searching for shortcuts when we shouldn’t, which is a timeless theme that feels urgently important the past few years.
The entire journey was fascinating start to finish, a refreshing coming-of-age story told through the eyes of my favorite heroine of the year.
5/5, I adore Lorel and cannot wait to see what she and her world get up to next. :)