Top 5 Wednesday is a great feature created by GingerReadsLainey and hosted by ThoughtsonTomes. To find out more about Top 5 Wednesday and the upcoming topics, check out its Goodreads page. This week it’s about books that feature witches, whether they are the main characters or there just happens to be a witch as a side character.
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
Eragon, and the whole Inheritance Cycle, features one of my favourite witches ever – Angela. I love her so much because she’s much older and wiser than she appears, she can make potions, she can fight and maybe she can see the future. You never really know what she’s capable of and that’s what makes Angela such a great character.
Book of Shadows by Cate Tiernan
This is the first book in the Sweep (or as I knew it Wicca) series. it’s about a girl called Morgan who thinks she’s perfectly normally until she discovers she’s a “blood witch” which is someone who is born with magical powers and she’s in fact a descendent of a long line of witches. I read this book, and the whole series, when I was about eleven or twelve and it was the first series I read solely by getting it out of the library.
Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman
It’s been a while since I’ve read Northern Lights but the witches in it, including witch queen Serafina Pekkala, came straight to mind when I saw this week’s topic. The witches in this book live in the north, don’t feel the cold and they can fly if they have the right type of tree branch. I really like their relationship with their dæmons, which are always birds, because they can be a part from each other without it causing either of them pain.
The Graces by Laure Eve
The Graces is one of those books where you it makes you wonder if magic and witches are real or if what happens is just pure chance. It’s such an intriguing read and there’s definitely magic in the air of some sort and the Graces do seem all powerful and mysterious.
Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski
This is the first book I thought of when I saw this topic. It’s an illustrated series of stories about a witch called Meg whose spells always go a bit wrong and her black and white stripped cat Mog. I had a collection of these stories when I was little and apparently I drove my mum mad by getting her to read it to me every single night!
What are some of your favourite books featuring witches?
Meg and Mog. I completely forgot about that series. Used to love that as a kid. Great post, by the way. Think my favourite book about witches has got to be ‘The Witches’. Roald Dahl created the ultimate witches for me and that book still terrifies me!
Thank you! I’ve not read The Witches, it’s one of the few Roald Dahl books I haven’t read, but I remember seeing some of the film and it was seriously creepy!
I’d definitely recommend it. It’s brilliant!
Serafina was also one of the first witches who came to my mind.
Great minds think alike! 😉 She, and all the witches in His Dark Materials, are so interesting!
Love this topic! I haven’t read any of these on your list. The Graces sounds interesting.
It’s a great topic this week, I love seeing everyone else’s witchy picks because it’s a sub-genre I don’t really read that often.
I love stumbling across other people who have read Sweep! It’s such a weirdly obscure series (or perhaps just really old!). I was obsessed with it for so long.
Same! I think it’s just kinda old – or at least I remember getting the books out of the library in the early 2000’s so I think the book blogosphere missed the hype. It was definitely one of my favourite series for a long time 🙂
Great list! The Graces sounds really good, another witch books to add to my tbr!
It’s a really atmospheric read, might not be for everyone but I did like it 🙂
For some odd reason, i never got into the Dragon phase!
I had a BIG dragon phase! 😛 I suppose the creature I didn’t really get into was vampires