In the suspenseful, action-packed debut of the Witch's Child trilogy, Canadian author Catherine Egan (the Last Days of Tian Di series) spins out a dark and deep, pseudo-Dickensian world of magic and crime.
Sixteen-year-old Julia and her younger brother, Benedek, a brilliant, disabled inventor, make their way in the employ of Esme, an organized crime leader with a soft spot for talented, downtrodden youths. Most recently, Esme has embedded Julia as a maid in a well-to-do household to ferret out the secrets of its inhabitants, including a heretical professor and an aristocrat from whose room unearthly howls occasionally issue. Julia's gift of invisibility--inherited from her mother who was drowned as a witch--makes her the perfect spy, but the secrets she finds have shocking implications. Caught in a whirlwind of old world legends and politics as shadowy forces in the country of Frayne vie for a weapon of limitless power, Julia must make a terrible choice that will leave her wondering if the belief that all witches are evil applies to her as well.
Julia's complexities fascinate: she's a prickly, evasive liar who places her own interests first, but she's also a loyal sister, a teenager whose heart falters when she sees her lover with his arm around a prettier girl, and a personality in flux who's still fleshing out her own moral code. Teens will appreciate this fantasy/heist drama hybrid for its suspense, but Julia's personality and her world teetering on the brink of uprising may prove the biggest draws for the trilogy. --Jaclyn Fulwood, lead librarian at Del City Public Library, Okla.