Ratchet the Reluctant Witch
Sara Pascoe
Rachel (that’s Ratchet to you) has been stuck in foster care ever since her schizophrenic mother was deemed to not be stable enough to care for her. When Ratchet starts hearing voices and seeing things, she is determined to run away before anything else goes wrong. Unfortunately, she time travels away to the witch trials of Essex.
Sigh. The blurb gives away the whole story. I mean, everything of it. So if you’re going to read this novel, please don’t read the blurb. Why are people so useless at writing blurbs that don’t give away everything?
For me, the part in Old Istanbul was the most enthralling and where we actually got to see Ratchet growing as a person. She might only be 15, but she has a right to work out what she wants for herself.
This is nice entry level teenage fiction that surely can’t offend anyone. I think there is one mention of sex, but the majority of the novel is about Ratchet and how she begins to deal with things – and realise that really adults often have no idea of what is going on. And therefore, you need to be ready to save yourself.
I interviewed Sara a while back, and have finally read this novel. Well worth it, despite the cover making me worry it would be to childish. I’d put it on a slightly higher reading difficulty than The Dragon of the Month, but give it similar points for providing a good reading experience. 4 stars from me.
Why is there no next book? I need one. Why was this so short? I need it to be longer! I didn’t want to step away from the characters.
Liv is a cute little character that isn’t very bright. Oh wait, she’s only 14. So we can excuse a wide number of things she does wrong, except maybe that theft. What were you thinking Liv? I think her brain just went into overdrive sometimes with the sheer amount of mess she had gotten herself into.
Having just read a novel where there is a difference between nice guys and good guys, River makes a good contrast of it. He starts out nice, passes through completely useless, then maybe to good. It’s that character evolution of being just another guy to being one who has gotten a bit of self-awareness happening.
I really like how the story develops with only hints of Annabel’s problems. It keeps the reader interested, and then invested in both of the characters. Julia too takes some time to get used to, and most of the time I found myself sympathising with her and wishing that she had more guts!
Lily is very… cold. I found it difficult to empathise with her because she seemed unchanged by deaths she had caused. Is it simply a side effect of being a witch? Or is it something else about her character that makes her too much like Lillian. They are the same person after all. I don’t think it was all about Lillian manipulating Lily, much as Rowan wanted to blame her.
There is no feeling of Merlin as a character as she begins simply as a construction of impersonal memories. The novel is plot based, and moves at a relatively fast pace once Merlin encounters other inhabitants of the desolate world. As long as you read this lightly without too many preconceived notions of how an apocalyptic novel should go, you will enjoy it.
I gobbled this up in an hour. I couldn’t put it down. The way Black interacted with her family, with Ed and with the others spoke strongly of her ability to keep on going. But Black, I’m sorry. Sometimes you just aren’t that bright. Sure, you are under a lot of stress, but seriously! Then again, you are only a teenager and teenagers tend to do things like that.
Nessa is an interesting character with her own mind, and she truly grows throughout the novel. It’s not just plot driven, there is definitely character development. Not to mention some very nice world-building of the island and its inhabitants.
I liked the realistic imagining of the different time periods. Phew, parallel worlds went completely nutty! There are so many ways for people to die, and then be refound. Maggie in particular gets to ‘enjoy’ this particular feeling, which is pretty crazy!