Blog tour review: Daughters of Nicnevin, by Shona Kinsella

Blurb

Mairead and Constance, two powerful witches, meet in the early days of
the 1745 Jacobite uprising. While the men of the village are away fighting,
the villagers face threats from both the Black Watch and raiders, and the
women are confronted with their vulnerability. They enlist the help of
Nicnevin, fae queen of witches, to bring men made of earth to life to help
protect their village. But just who do they need protection from? And what
will happen when the village men return?

My Review

I bought this book at WFC in Brighton. Nick and the Flame Tree team had a table. I also know the author, though not as well as some of my friends amd acquaintances. The day after I bought this book Anne Cater from Random Things Tours emailed about the blog tour. Since I had a copy I said I’d do a review.

I got started a couple of days after I got home from Brighton. I had to recover from travelling and had a cold at the time. Nonetheless, the first reading session was 136 pages and I only stopped because I had to nap. It took a few more days before I had the time and energy to read the rest but once I picked it up I sped through the remaining pages.

The two main characters,  Constance and Mairead, are powerful witches. Constance has made herself small and compliant, hid her magic and married her husband, Liam,  for safety. Mairead has always known that if people find out she’s a witch they’ll harm her, so she moves often and nevers stays too long in any place. Their lives are dictated by their fears. When they find each other they have chance to build lives based on authenticity and love.

Mairead can see a life for them, where they don’t have to hide and her need to run away slowly disapates as she makes friends in Kilmartin, people who trust, respect and love her. She engages in a major act of magic to protect the people she’s started to care about and wants to do what’s right.

Constance is more afraid of the world than she is in love with Mairead, and it drives her to manipulation and  murder. She runs away rather than facing the consequences of her actions and makes herself smal, hidden, again, until her child is put at risk. She finally sees sense, pays her debts and is free to live the life she and Mairead deserve.

Nicnevin is one of the facilitating factors that allow the pair to face their fears and develop their understanding of themselves. She’s a conduit for their growth amd development. She’s also a flashy bitch. Her snark when Constance asks if Nicnevin is going to kill her is brilliant and biting. Just what you expect from fae.

The burning of the kirk in Kilmartin, left without a preacher for some time, marks a break between the old religious order and the return of magic and the fae, to Kilmartin at least. It signals in the book a break between the old witch killing days of the early modern period, when religious madness killed innocents, and the modern period, when political madness killed innocents.

Scotland hand a disturbing number of witch trials, and 80% of the victims were women. The main characters remember the fear of their parents and grandparents, from approximately the late 1600s, when witch hunting was in vogue.  It was an early modern phenomenon, probably brought into prominence by the wars of religion – got to prove your version is more right than someone else’s version, and how do you do that? By murdering anyone you consider a heretic and blaming everything on bad magic. By the 1740s things had calmed down, and the early spark of the Enlightenment had been lit, but the people of the Highlands wouldn’t necessarily know that. It took a long time for need to travel and even longer for cultural traditions amd conventions to change. Given the complex social and cultural changes happening at the time, Constance and Mairead are right to be afraid; fear of the King’s army and a bad winter could easily turn people on their friends amd neighbours.

The fears of the people of Kilmartin during Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s campaign in 1745, and the aftermath of Culloden, are palpable in the writing.  The terrors let loose on the Highlands by King George’s troops after were horrific. I’m sure if people could have created earth men to defend them they would have.

Flame Tree make beautiful books. They pay so much attention to cover design. Their books are works of art and the stories in them are often equally beautiful. At WFC I bought 5 books and 3 notebooks because I like pretty things. I will review the other books eventually. If you buy the books at FantasyCon you get a discount too. It’s great, highly recommend it.

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About the Author

Shona Kinsela is a British Fantasy Award nominated author who lives and works in Scotland. Her works include the Vessel of KalaDene trilogy, industrial fantasy novella, The Flame and the Flood, and dark Scottish
fantasy novella Petra MacDonald and the Queen of the Fae. She is the Chair of the British Fantasy Society.

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About Flame Tree

Winner of the Independent Publisher of the Year Award, 2024, FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing Independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Learn more about Flame Tree Press at http://www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress.