Hill Magick
Julia French
Damnation Press
June, 2013
Reviewed by Jess Landry
Rachel Jeffries is a woman stuck in a rut. She has no family or friends. She has no job and no life. She’s a prisoner in her own home; a servant to her abusive husband, Mark. But Rachel isn’t the type of person to simply lay down and die. She wants to leave, to start new. She just needs to find that lucky break to get started.
Rachel stumbles upon a job with the local newspaper and immediately takes it without telling her husband. She’s on her first assignment when bad weather and a crappy rental car see her derailed straight into a watery ditch. It’s this accident that causes a chance meeting with True Gannett, a backwoods “witch man” well-versed in the ways of natural healing and magic. After getting to know each other a little better, True offers to teach Rachel about healing magic, though Rachel isn’t entirely convinced it exists.
While Rachel’s getting her life together and the relationship blossoms between her and True, an evil wizard named Joshua has got a dastardly plan. After a few nasty spells and a little bit of necromancy, he’s ready to inflict a world of pain upon anyone that does him wrong, which comes to include Rachel and True.
Author Julia French’s grasp of her characters makes Hill Magick compelling, particularly her understanding of Rachel. She’s such a complex character wrought with guilt and overburdened by her abusive husband. She’s indecisive and often blames herself for getting beaten. She’s a woman divided – she wants to leave her husband, she knows she has to, but at the same time she finds excuses for his abuse. Rachel goes from this frail, weak woman to a woman more in control of her own life. She’s not the typical hero who goes from fragile to a force to be reckoned with though. She’s still a work in progress, and that makes her character much more believable.
One thing that was clear while reading Hill Magick is that French did her homework. The book is full of magicky goodness, from using Hawthorn trees as a form of protection to practical uses of vanilla bottles to everything in between. Those little details added a whole lot of realism (well, as real as can be with magic) to the situations that Rachel and True find themselves in.
At only 187 pages, Hill Magick is a short-but-sweet story about life, love and the two sides of magic. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then Hill Magick may be right up your alley.
