Top 5 Wednesday

I think I will need to make a more fallish or spooky picture for next weeks post. This week’ Top 5 post is all about Witches.  I love a good witch story, so I had many to choose from.  I tried to come up with a few that are maybe not as well known so maybe won’t show up on everyone’s lists.  Please remember to go to the Goodreads group to see everyone else’s Top 5’s are. 

Top Five Favorite Witch Books.

1. The Half Bad series by Sally Green

This series is full of witches, and almost none of them are what I would call good.  Even the white witches who are supposedly the good ones are horrible, especially in their treatment of Nathan.  A brilliant series, that is very dark and sad, I highly recommend it.

2. The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

This was one of those books that you either loved or hated.  I really liked it, it was a very unusual take on witches and the culture of Geishas.  It was a little slow moving and sometimes hard to follow with chapters alternating between present and past but I still really enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one.

2. The Witch Hunter by Virginia Boecker

I loved this book when it first came out in 2015.  I met the author at the ALA conference and had a great conversation about it with her.  Very fast paced and an interesting take on witches.  This is a duology, but I didn’t like the second quite as much as the first. But I will still pick up the next book by this author.  I liked her writing style and her characters were interesting and well developed.

3. Vassa in the Night by Sara Porter

Admittedly this is a very dark and weird witch story, but the depiction of this modern day Baba Yaga is spectacular.  Beautifully written and a great retelling of the Baba Yaga stories.  You just have to push through some of the weirdness.

4. Dorothy Must Die series by Danielle Paige

I chose the second book cover in the series because it seemed to fit the theme better than the first.  This is a very dark and twisted retelling of the Oz books.  I loved the first couple of books but by the last one I wasn’t as thrilled with them.  I loved all of the witches in the story though, both the good ones and the evil ones although there were times when I couldn’t tell which was which.  Still a good solid series.

5. The Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett

Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching thinks her Granny Aching – a wise shepherd – might have been a witch, but now Granny Aching is dead and it’s up to Tiffany to work it all out when strange things begin happening: a fairy-tale monster in the stream, a headless horseman and, strangest of all, the tiny blue men in kilts, the Wee Free Men, who have come looking for the new ‘hag’.

These are the Nac Mac Feegles, the pictsies, who like nothing better than thievin’, fightin’ and drinkin’.

Then Tiffany’s young brother goes missing and Tiffany and the Wee Free Men must join forces to save him from the Queen of the Fairies . . .

I’ve included the summary for this one because I will bet many people have not heard of this one.  Tiffany doesn’t yet know she is a witch in this first book, but you have to admire a girl who goes to rescue her younger brother from the fairies armed only with an iron frying pan.  I also loved the Wee Free Men, they totally crack me up with their banter and bickering, although sometimes their accent is hard to figure out.  Still one of my favorite witch stories and was the second book I thought of when I saw the topic for this week.

That is my top five witch books.  I hope you maybe found something you want to add to your TBR.  Have you read any of these?  Which is your favorite witch story?  Leave a comment and let me know.