Her Majesty's Royal Coven
Oct. 6th, 2025 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearFor a book with a civil service pun title, I was expecting Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson to be a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, witchy romp, with maybe some cozy romance on the side.
What I got was a hard-hitting, female-driven, politically complex exploration of trans rights, with a lot of emotive themes of trauma, patriarchy, layered friendships and general doom.
Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing - it just took me a little while to adjust.
So, the government oracles are all predicting the end times are upon us, and trans teenager gets caught in the middle of the prophecy, meaning that she's being targeted as well as discriminated against.
Some of the theme exploration was a bit heavy-handed, but I appreciated the author trying to understand where certain attitudes arise from.
I liked the characters and the book had a lot of good ideas - but I'm not going to continue with the series because I don't think I want to see the predicted doom played out on the page.
What I got was a hard-hitting, female-driven, politically complex exploration of trans rights, with a lot of emotive themes of trauma, patriarchy, layered friendships and general doom.
Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing - it just took me a little while to adjust.
So, the government oracles are all predicting the end times are upon us, and trans teenager gets caught in the middle of the prophecy, meaning that she's being targeted as well as discriminated against.
Some of the theme exploration was a bit heavy-handed, but I appreciated the author trying to understand where certain attitudes arise from.
I liked the characters and the book had a lot of good ideas - but I'm not going to continue with the series because I don't think I want to see the predicted doom played out on the page.
