“There are three basic ways of enacting your will upon the world. There is action, there are words, and there is magic. A witch worth her cloak is versed in all three.”

The Sapling Cage (2024) is the first novel in Margaret Killjoy’s new series, The Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy. As a huge fan of Killjoy’s writing, I was incredibly excited to read her new book. The Sapling Cage does not disappoint. The novel is a delightful coming of age story that delivers all the thrills and magic of epic fantasy, whilst subverting many of the genre’s usual assumptions to explore Killjoy’s key themes of collective organisation, community, and the trans experience. Using her own personal perspective and her sharp skills at drawing character and building worlds, Killjoy achieves what many would have thought impossible – in 2024 she has written a fresh and exciting new take on the YA witch novel, one that links back to the environmental and ethical concerns of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books whilst pointing towards the future in terms of politics and gender exploration. 

Lorel is a stable hand who dreams of running away and becoming a witch. The only problem is, she was born a boy and witches don’t accept men into their ranks. When the witches come to recruit her childhood friend Lane, a girl who would far rather be a knight, the two swap places, allowing Lorel to join the witches whilst Lane runs away to join the knights. Soon Lorel is leading the life she always wanted, living as a woman and learning the ways of magic from her coven. But the Kingdom of Cekon is wilder and more dangerous than Lorel could have imagined. Everywhere the trees and plants are being killed by a terrible blight, and witches are being blamed for it. Duchess Helte is using this as an excuse to sow discord between the knights, the witches and the people and make a bid for the throne. And as the danger gathers around her coven, Lorel still lives in fear that her secret will be found out, even as she makes friends and grows closer to the witches she learns from.

The Sapling Cage is a crucial work of own voices epic fantasy that centres the trans experience. The novel follows Lorel’s journey as a young trans woman, as she discovers her own identity, learns that among the witches she has friends who love her and accept her even as there are others who do not, and comes to terms with the fact that magic could give her the body she’s always wanted for a price, should she decide that’s what she wants. The Kingdom of Cekon is a world where there is still prejudice, but it’s also a place where there are communities that are queer-normative, where different sexualities and gender expressions are accepted. Typically of Killjoy’s writing, no one group of people is a monolith – from the witches to the different factions of knights to the ordinary people, each are made up of flawed, recognisable people, some of whom are more accepting of others, some of whom stubbornly cling to their prejudices. Lorel learns how these different groups of people interact, and how to safely navigate them.

The novel also has an excellent supporting cast. Character is one of the areas where Killjoy really shines. Lorel’s coven is made up of a motley group of characters, the respected elder witches Dam Alectoria and Dam Ilma, the middle-aged and calm Dam Sorrel, the grumpy young witch with a heart of gold Dam Lament, Sorrel’s apprentice Rose, and fellow whelps or witches-in-training Araneigh and Hex. Lorel learns how to fight and practice magic under Lament’s tutelage, becomes fast friends with her crush Araneigh, and has an intense rivalry with Hex, who was promised to the witches but doesn’t want to become one. This tense found family comes together over a series of adventures, where they learn to trust and care for each other. There’s also the whelps from other covens, Daidi, Henomi and Haim, who likewise become friends with Araneigh, Hex and Lorel and get into various scrapes and adventures. Each is sensitively drawn, a believable character in their own right with depth, even the ones who are less sympathetic come from somewhere understandable, and the intergroup dynamics are wonderfully realised.

Killjoy’s other great strength is exploring alternative modes of organisation. As with her previous work, her anarchist philosophy informs the novel. Killjoy employs the trappings of fantasy – the empty throne awaiting a king, the nobility, knights – in order to interrogate the genre’s fixation on authority figures. The witches have a hierarchy, with the older and therefore more powerful witches accorded more respect, but within that it’s quite egalitarian and self-organising. Individual covens meet up in huge group meets to exchange information and debate about what collective action they need to take in the face of the increasing threats of Duchess Helte’s forces and the Blighters. And while they can be self-important and pompous, they can also be reasoned with – Lorel and her friends manage to argue their way out of trouble on various occasions, reminding the witches of their own distaste for authority figures and the hypocrisy of setting themselves up as any kind of authority. Then there’s the Ilthuran knights, who instead of serving the nobility serve their own individual code and help to fight against both the other knights and the bandits to protect the witches and the people. These alternative forms of organisation question the traditional roles of knights and royalty we see so often in fantasy, and provide a different way of looking at the world. 

That’s not to say that The Sapling Cage is a dry work of philosophy. There is plenty of intrigue and action, battles between witches and wonderfully inventive demons, the joy and thrill of good magic and some genuinely creepy evil magic. Killjoy has created a wondrous fantasy world full of inventive creatures, endearing characters and frightening villains. It’s an absolute joy to read, and leaves the reader craving the next volumes in the trilogy immediately. I look forward to the continuing adventures and surprises that Killjoy no doubt has in store for Lorel and her friends. 

The Sapling Cage is due for release 7th November – you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org