Tuesday, June 18, 2013

ARC SPOT: Weather Witch

Weather Witch 
Shannon Delany
St. Martin's Griffin
Releases 6.25.2013
ISBN: 9871250018519

Blurb from the Publisher:

In a vastly different and darker Philadelphia of 1844, steam power has been repressed, war threatens from deep, dark waters, and one young lady of high social standing is expecting a surprise at her seventeenth birthday party–but certainly not the one she gets!

Jordan Astraea, who has lived out all of her life in Philadelphia’s most exclusive neighborhood, is preparing to celebrate her birthday with friends, family and all the extravagance they might muster. The young man who is most often her dashing companion, Rowen Burchette, has told her a surprise awaits her and her best friend, Catrina Hollindale, wouldn’t miss this night for all the world!

But storm clouds are gathering and threatening to do far more than dampen her party plans because someone in the Astraea household has committed the greatest of social sins by Harboring a Weather Witch.

Our Thoughts On:

                Shannon Delany is one of those authors that I feel is like a wave, the beginning of her series begin soft and slightly slow (do not be discouraged!), but with the description of the storyline building, cresting you are blow away within a third of her books. Weather Witch begins with a background; opening up into the budding of a young woman, but also a terrible curse across the land in the form of witches. Like a stain, any family found harboring a Witch, or ceasing to know of them even was a witch, means social upheaval and basically an outcast predicament. Many noble families high up in their society’s value of number casting has been torn asunder and ripped from their elegance with the emergence of a Witch child.
                In the world of the Weather Witch Shannon Delany has woven a heartbreaking tale of magic and ignorance ripe in an age of elegance and station. With a main character who is condemned due to an emergence of power on her 17th birthday, to a lie and betrayal, Delany weaves this YA title through beauty and benevolence. Witches are broken and then Made into a power force that all families and people of their world, somewhat like electricity. With this power, many people of stature and value in society believe that the Witches are taken care of and hare happy to serve their country, but that is dark and far from the truth.
                In fact, Holgate, Pennyslvania holds the terrible price for the value of the commodities that the Witches produce, it holds the place where the Witches of power are Made and harnessed. Weather Witch begins with Holgate’s tallest tower, and the only Witch to escape it. Marion Kruse has had a terrible past and his future is ripe with vengeance, but when this crosses paths with newly found Jordan Astraea a whole new series from Shannon Delany is born. Jordan Kruse is turning 17, far past an age where normal Witches are found, and at her party there is nothing Jordan fears more than a marriage promise from her longtime friend. What Jordan discovers is that there is Witch power in the air, although she is certain that it is not found within her, and that finding the truth will be more painful than she ever imagined.
                With mystery, intrigue and filled with desperation and discovery Weather Witch will captivate readers into the plight of a young woman at the age of discovering, but finding out that the truth is a hard stone cast. With a strong and willful male role in Rowen Burchette, a supporting character reader’s will follow a romance but also a growth in a boy finding strength within himself to right wrongs and save the girl he loves from certain doom.  The Maker of Witches, Bran Marshall develops into a terrible but tortured character who has a twist at the end which will keep readers entranced even while they cringe, but Delany effortlessly fills out the role of tortured and torturer.

                Get ready for a whole new reality filled with pain and suffering for a little magic to light your way. This series is truly not to be missed with the upcoming YA releasse of 2013 and Weather Witch will capture readers while leaving us all wanting more from author Shannon Delany and her captivating characters.

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