A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher
3.0 Stars
3-25-2025

This is fine. I've never been *entirely* in love with a Kingfisher book, and this entry continues the tradition. In this case I wasn't all that excited about the main MC (she lacks too much autonomy through too much of the book), I'm rarely a fan of the English class-system or this sort of middle-class American rendering of it, I never fully connected with the noblewoman/nobleman ensemble that formed, etc. etc. [Edit: reading some of the tags on this book later on, they have the tag "Found Family". But the MC isn't finding family with the servants of the story. And the happy ending is that the MC is promoted to full on gentry. Why her? Why not her chambermaid? Why doesn't the chambermaid get to become a real person? Why is it cute when the butler gets to pretend for a minute that he is a real human being and can talk to the other characters like real and equal human beings? etc. etc.] The book has OK bits; the magic and horror of the setting expands as the book goes on in a sort of Dracula-esque fashion, geese are always good, ditto with playing a game to sound someone out, and there's some perfectly workmanlike instances of wit or humor. Anyway. Go further Kingfisher! Don't just be a Robert Jordan who takes the Star Wars and the Dunes and the other common influences of the day and mashes them together to produce slurry. Make something that is more your own, something that could not be produced just as well by 100 other fan-fic writers.

Oh right, and if you wanted to you could read this as part of the Camilia Bruce extended universe? There's a weirdly large amount of shared concepts between the two of them; a witch, a witch-horse, the witch being hoisted by her own witch-horse, a botched early engagement leading to bad feelings and serial killings, additional marriages with an eye towards widowhood and monetary gain, and children with a somewhat antagonistic relationship towards their mother.