A magical culture-mash that works like a charm

I don't know much about the fantasy genre, except that I quite like to read it. As far as subgenres go, it's never occurred to me to distinguish high fantasy from low, horror from historical or speculative from supernatural. I guess I know these important lay-lines exist, splitting the genre up into special fields, but do I care? I do not.

I'm as happy in Stephen King's paranormal 2023 America as I am in any of your high-fantasy invented worlds. I have a corporate job and two teenaged sons, so just show me to the closest escape hatch please, and put a large red wine in my hand, pronto.

With this cheerful disdain for the rules, I embarked on Juno Dawson's Her Majesty's Royal Coven on audiobook and was met with quite a surprise: for here is a story of proper world-threatening good-versus-evil magic set RIGHT NOW, in a world where grown women drunk-dance to nostalgic 90s club hits; a world of mobile phones and Googling; of modern queer relationships and intersectional identities.

You can see why this book is such a hit: I imagine readers all over the world (younger readers, especially) cheering to see much loved archetypical magical struggles set in a world with today's sexual politics and cultural references. I cheered too (and I see you, Harry Potter fans who've been let down by JK; more to come on that).

Nicola Coughlan's narration was pretty incredible: I don't think I've ever listened to an audiobook which placed such demands on a narrator. She voices characters who inhabit the full range of age, origin and class background. Her natural Irish lilt was a real pleasure to listen to, even as I marveled that listening to a book seems to take at least TWICE as long as reading it. Here are the reasons why I thought this book was a banger (lookout, mild spoilers).

1. The trans/TERF plotline. Currently, trans people are targets, the world over, for a special kind of hatred. This book is timely and carries a strong message. When distressed teen Theo reveals she is a girl and not a boy, exceptional witch Niamh must confront her old friend Helena, now head of the coven, to argue for Theo's inclusion in that traditionally all-female institution. Helena's classic trans-exclusionary women-born-women-only response shows her clinging to beliefs that are founded on prejudice rather than logic or lived experience. Niamh is the voice of a modern, inclusive philosophy, one that shouts that feminism and trans exclusion cannot be bedfellows: because at its heart, feminism can never police the boundaries of what is and isn't a woman.
2. Women's friendships to the front. This book is about women of all kinds. Queer, straight, trans. Compliant, defiant. Contented or restless, always powerful. The opening scenes show the senior women of the story as children, then later as witches bound together by losses suffered in an epic war against darkness, set not long in the past. Partnerships with lovers and life partners take second place to these enduring, mighty, complex friendships.
3. More twists than a rope maker's workshop. Not much gets past this jaded old story-tart. But Her Majesty's Royal Coven has plenty of unexpected turns and ends with a twisty cliffhanger that these narrative x-ray specs DID NOT see coming. Huzzah! Bring on book 2 (yes, I have the audiobook on pre-order).