Talisa Maria is on page 39 of 329 of Howl’s Moving Castle

"“For the fortunate, a witch-hunt is just a metaphor–but this history should make clear how many witches are truly still on trial.�

Admittedly this was quite a slog to get through and took me a while to finish (hense not the full five stars!). But I’m glad I persevered. As despite the often rigid academic writing style, with what felt like endless lists of names, dates, and facts, this book was a fascinating and somewhat terrifying deep dive into a history of witch trials across the globe. Most of which I had never heard of before reading.

Most of us probably think first and foremost of the infamous Salem witch trials, or perhaps the rampant trials across Britain under James VI/I, such as the Pendle witch trials. But, whilst those events are excellently explored in this book, and remain an important part in understanding witch trial history, what this book offers is a much wider span of the stories of women, and men, who suffered awful fates due to misogyny, colonialism, and undeserved fear and distrust. It takes us to practically every corner of the globe, and across several thousand years, to show just how engrained witches and witch accusations were and are in our society today.

There were a lot of illuminating moments throughout this book, but honestly, what I found the most shocking, and am ashamed to admit I was completely ignorant about, is that witch trials are actually not a thing of the past. They are on going, and a shocking number of women and girls are still subject to accusations of witchcraft to this day. Leading them to be shunned, attacked, tortured, enslaved, demonised and even killed due to baseless accusations of witchcraft. Gibson encourages us to consider how we can help support, protect, and advocate for those people still accused of witchcraft around the world, as well as how we can be more conscious of, and challenge, language used today that mirrors the flawed and harmful ideologies of the witch hunters of our past to attack, persecute and demonise innocent people.

I highly encourage anyone to give this book a try. A tough one to get through, lots of information to absorb, but in the end very eye-opening and I think a very important read."

Yasmin Plant is 22% done with Slewfoot