Fiction Reviews
Wooing The Witch Queen
(2025), Stephanie Burgis, Bramble, £14.99, trdpbk, 295pp, ISBN 978-1-035-06299-7
With a title like that comes certain expectations – I’m pleased to report that they are met in full.
Our magical monarch on this occasion is Queen Saskia of Kitvaria – think Ruritania with a side order of the Brothers Grimm. Having overthrown her usurping uncle with the help of monstrous allies, she’s trying to consolidate her reign and win round her human subjects. All while fending off the armies of the neighbouring, expansionist Serafin Empire with a wall of magical force.
No wonder that, with all of this to contend with, she’s had to learn to be ruthless, presenting herself as a fearsome witch-queen to friend and foe alike. You know the type from a thousand Dungeons & Dragons scenarios: wears a crown of bones, lives in a dank castle atop a mountain, served by ogres, goblins and trolls, transforms her enemies into lower forms of life, and so on.
But all Saskia really wants to do is protect the people of Kitvaria and – when not reluctantly fulfilling her other royal duties – return to the laboratory to continue her magical research. She’s certainly not a woman to be trifled with, but a villain? Hardly.
Into Saskia’s life comes incognito archduke Felix, fleeing his sheltered life in the Empire in fear of his life and seeking her protection. Through the usual misunderstandings inherent in romantic comedies, she assumes he is her new (and evil) librarian-wizard, come to catalogue and organise her spell books. A task to which Felix, much to his surprise, discovers he is as well suited. And as they live and work alongside each other, their mutual attraction grows.
As suggested at the start of this review, Wooing The Witch Queen is nothing if not an effective piece of work and knows what it’s about. The romance between Saskia and Felix is enjoyably done, and there is more than enough wooing, flirtation and seduction as it develops to meet the brief. And if the reader identifies either with Saskia or Felix, or has a particular appreciation for a strong woman/bookish man dynamic, they may well add one more point to what is already a solidly three-star effort.
Yet the book is certainly better than it needs to be. Stephanie Burgis is an author of no small experience and covers court politics and the threat of invasion as confidently as she does the main relationship and the supporting characters (particularly the unexpectedly cosy community of monsters in the castle). The fantasy works as well as the romance and vice versa – not always a given in this genre. There’s elegant set-up work for the next one, perhaps two novels in the planned trilogy.
On a more judgmental day, I might argue that this is still not enough; that I’d like to see more than an effective (that word again) combination of romance and fantasy, something that really takes the power of both and does something breathtaking with it. But, taken on its own terms, I quite enjoyed this Queen. And I do appreciate a genre exercise well-executed, which this certainly is.
Tim Atkinson
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