A Review of Mary Borsellino’s The Hollow Witch

My pledge to myself for 2025 was to expand my reviewing beyond just theatre, more regularly adding book reviews seeing as I have spent so many years studying books anyway. With that in mind, I have also had to consider increasing the amount of books that I read – typically it takes far longer to read a book than watch a play! So, we’re ten days into the year and I have already read two books, not bad going if I say so myself. My second book of the year was The Hollow Witch by Mary Borsellino, a high fantasy YA novel which takes us on a journey to a place where the cost of magic is a particularly high one.

All magic comes at a price, any good fairytale or OUAT meme will tell you that, but what that price is varies from fantasy novel to fantasy novel. In the fictional kingdom of Arteria, where magic is collected and siphoned off securely, this price is the resurrection of the dead, or zombie-esque creatures known as cadaveri. In this world there are magical foundling armies which protect the people, and the towns and city people who live in fear. One of our protagonists is the former. Silvie is a fiercely independent soldier, suffering from a crippling injury which results in the loss of both physical and magical capabilities. By contrast, Azura is a privileged girl living in the heart of the kingdom, friend of royalty and daughter to the court alchemist. Worlds collide when Silvie becomes the alchemist’s apprentice and the two must learn about different ways of life in order to find a common thread. It is a story which touches upon a range of themes including prejudice, child abuse, and homophobia, seeking to tackle big issues through a fantasy lens, albeit if a little clumsily at times.

The heavy handed discussion of themes follows through into the exposition, with a little too much reliance on telling over showing and a reliance on tropes to indicate the growing romance. Certainly, there were some good moments of description and the world itself was an interesting one, but the fleshing out of the characters fell somewhat short. This felt like a story which could have really captured the imagination, but unfortunately has not quite reached its full potential. If Borsellino had spent a few more words breathing life into these characters and filling in the gaps between the sometimes erratic time jumps, this would have been a compelling story about how mistreatment can make you want to burn the whole world down. There was a poignant story to be told here and a fascinating idea of what magic truly costs and I would have liked to feel more invested in the personal journeys the characters were going on. If I were allocating this a star rating it would be a solid three – an interesting story with potential.

Image courtesy of https://www.maryborsellino.com/mary/