“The coven is sovereign

Until my dying breath”

This time round was a re-read for me, as I hadn’t got round to reviewing it the first time, and I wanted to refresh myself before reading the sequel and the final instalment which has just come out. I loved it the first time, and if possible I loved it even more this time with the benefit of knowing what’s to come and being able to pick out things I missed the first time around. There was a lot of hype surrounding this book when it first came out, and honestly it is so well deserved. If you loved the movie ‘The Craft’, and grew up in the UK in the nineties/noughties, then there’s a great deal about this witchy friend group that you’ll love and relate to.

HMRC follows witches Niamh, Elle, Leonie, and Helena. They live in a Britain where magic is secret, but there is an official coven of witches that works alongside the government, to advise and maintain the magical populace.

The story opens on these girls the night before their initiation, when they’re young and their concerns centre around which Spice Girl they get to be and which Boyzone member they’re going to marry. We skip then to the future, to their adulthood, and learn that in the interim period there was a war between the coven and a splinter group of witches and warlocks who believed they should exert control over the non-magical populace, and used demons to violently back up this belief. The coven won, but at huge losses, including Helena’s husband, Niamh’s fiancé, and Niamh’s twin sister Ciara, who was on the other side of the war, and now lays in an induced magical coma in protective custody.

And so we find the coven: Helena is head of the coven in Manchester, the youngest in generations and a feminist trail-blazer. Leonie, living in London with her girlfriend, head of her own splinter coven for people of colour and queer people. Elle is living a secret life from her husband and children, hiding the fact she is a witch, which is blown out the water when her daughter Holly starts to present magical talent. And Niamh, retired from the coven and living in Hebden Bridge near Elle, working as a vet. Helena seeks out Niamh’s help when the oracles start prophesising about a sullied child, about the rise of the demon leviathan, and a teenage boy is found with inexplicable levels of magical ability. Horrified that this child, Theo, is being kept in a prison, Niamh takes him back to Hebden Bridge, and along with Elle’s daughter Holly, agrees to train them.

I’m aware I don’t normally talk about plot at this length, and I promise that’s all I’ll tell you – yes, that is just the beginning, and yes, things KICK OFF in this book.

It is packed to the rafters with magic and action, it’s twisty as cracks and then chasms form in this sisterhood of witches as the prophecy enfolds. Dawson’s writing style is succinct yet evocative and highly effective. She is able to convey so much in terms of character, foreshadowing, her themes, in a highly economic way. Each character is distinct and wholly realised in their beliefs and their sense of each other, their sisterhood and coven. This is very much a story of exploring the lengths to which people can be pushed – through their bonds for each other, through their sense of what is right or wrong. The control fear can have over a person, and how far you can fall once under its control.

As well-realised Dawson’s version of Britain is, with its bureaucracy of magic users, its communities and history of witchcraft, her strength in this story lies entirely with her characters and their connections. They are devastating and heart-breaking, the message that you cannot deny your nature a clarion call through it all.

I have recommended this book to so many people when I was a bookseller, and I will never tire of doing so. It’s a contemporary fresh story of witchcraft sisterhood that is vitally relevant in current conversations around gender and the queer community. It’s an entertaining enough story in of itself, with a great commentary on the nature of prophesising and fitting such things to your own meaning, but it’s an important read in the ways it brings the genre of witches and magic into contemporary issues.

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven is available now – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org