The Witches of Willowmere
The Warding of Willowmere is the second book in the Willowmere Chronicles. It takes the witchcraft of Potter-mania, daimons, reincarnation and other realities to a whole new dimension, without being too overtly pro-coven. The most endearing quality of this book is that it is also a coming-of-age story of a very ordinary, down-to-earth, teenage girl.
The author begins her story literally at the very beginning. The setting is very hot and very dry and the time is before all known human time. The author begins Claire's story with Claire's first life, as Flower-in-a-Drought. Claire, or rather Flower-in-a-Drought, feels the heat, feels the thirst and the hunger. She is really there. Just as she challenges the evil Shaman, Flower-in-a-Drought returns to the early twenty-first century and she is Claire Norton. The conflict with this evil returns in her current life.
At this point the story is rather confusing, because the reader has been taken from early B.C. time to 2004 and then Claire is recalling another past life, a life in seventeenth century Scotland as Mistress Alice Ramsay. The seventeenth century was a time of suspicion and fear, a time when anyone different was accused of being a witch. As Alice, Claire had been tried as a witch and sentenced to death. As these memories return to her, Claire wonders about her current powers as a witch.
She recalls her daimon from the seventeenth century, Leo. At this point, the author provides considerable information regarding daimons to distill the common thought that daimons are always demons and evil. A daimon is an essence, which can take over the minds and actions of any animal. A daimon is supposed to shadow and protect its human partner. It would appear that Claire has had the same daimon in both previous lives. It was the lion who stood by her when she was Flower-in-a-Drought; and she called it Leo when she was Alice Ramsay. She currently wonders what happened to Leo. She fears he still blames himself for her capture as a witch in the seventeenth century. He re-appears as a voice in her mind speaking through the lost kitten that she rescues and he takes her mind to unreal alternate realities.
About a quarter of the way through the novel, the story begins to unfold and the reader is able to comprehend and understand the progress of events. The confusion of the first part may have been due to the fact that this book is the second book in a series. Once the story unfolds, one is anxious to follow the fate of Claire as she once again battles the force of evil and tries to save the world. It is an all-too-familiar theme with a twist of originality.
My first thought was that here was another story on witches and I wondered if we should we be encouraging our young people to read these stories. Then the good-and-evil witch theme merged with the good-and-bad girl theme in a very twenty-first century High School. Claire really is a very likeable teenager. She has friends; some of these friends are adults. She has good marks. She even has a good relationship with her father, he's teaching her how to drive and they even eat meals together and they communicate. Her mother, however, remains somewhat of a mystery since she disappeared before this story began. The missing parent syndrome is an all-too-familiar scenario for this generation! Claire later defends her mother, believing that she, too, is a witch, and that she left in order to protect Claire and her father.
Claire interacts with boys and girls at the High School. She is respected by most of the people her age and most of the adults. Unlike her adversary, Josie, Claire looks and is symbolic of all that is good in the world. Josie is the personification of evil. She studies the evil powers of witchcraft. She even dresses in black and wears black make-up. She attacks Claire at the High School, in the viciously verbal way that teenage girls attack one another. Away from the school, she physically attacks Claire, evil witch against good witch.
I think it was the story of Claire as a real teenager that interested me the most. I find stories about witchcraft a little overbearing, at times. I prefer to read about my own reality. But this story was written to conquer both realms and it works, once the reader gets past the confusion at the beginning.
