The feathers landed on the floor right in front of her. She stared at them—the quill, the shaft, each filament of down. Then she could see the smaller structures—dust and barb and cell. Smaller and smaller went the details of her vision, until she could see each particle, spinning around itself like a tiny galaxy. She was as mad as they come, after all. She shifted the particles across the yawning emptiness between them, this way and that, until a new whole emerged. The feathers were no longer feathers. They were paper. [chapter 26]
Every year the Elders take the youngest baby, the most recently born, into the forest, and leave the child for the Witch to find. They don't actually believe in the Witch, but they do believe that a population living in fear is a population who'll keep the Elders in the style to which they have become accustomed. Occasionally a parent rebels against the sacrifice of their child, and is taken off to the Tower. And on the Day of Sacrifice which opens The Girl Who Drank the Moon, a young acolyte begins to question why the Witch would want a baby -- and whether there even is a Witch.
Of course there's a Witch. Her name is Xan, she's more than five hundred years old, and she lives in the swamp with Fyrian (a Perfectly Tiny Dragon) and Glerk (a Monster, who is also a poet and may be a god). Xan rescues the children abandoned by the Elders, feeds them starlight, and takes them to the Free Cities to be adopted by loving families. Unfortunately, Xan lets this latest child drink moonlight, thus enmagicking her: she raises the girl, Luna, herself, and binds her magic until her thirteenth birthday.
The events leading up to that birthday, and the oversetting of the status quo, are told in this charming and witty tale that deals with some heavy real-world themes: oppression, indoctrination, misogyny, murder. The Elders pathologise the misery of the mother who's had her child taken, and the Sisters in the Tower make her doubt that she ever had a daughter. The magic in this novel is complex and nuanced, with effects that are not always positive. The characters are (mostly) delightful, and the climax of the novel -- when Luna, her mother, Xan, the doubting acolyte, and villainous Sister Ignatia all converge on disparate quests -- is splendid. Justice, love, a volcano and an ancient betrayal; happy endings for those who deserve them; a thoroughly satisfactory novel, and one that doesn't talk down to its target audience ('older children').
Fulfils the ‘Newbery Medal winner’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge. I chose this novel because (a) my local library had an e-copy and (b) I'd read and very much enjoyed Kelly Barnhill's novel for adults, When Women Were Dragons. I think The Girl Who Drank the Moon shares something of the same sensibility.
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