Her Majesty’s Royal Coven

This first adult novel by YA author Dawson (Clean; Meat Market) is a story of feminism, matriarchy, gender roles, and tradition, in which a group of women at a crossroads must decide between what’s right and what’s easy. Niamh, Helena, Leonie, and Elle fought and won a war between witches and warlocks that drove them to separate scarred futures. The Coven’s prophets predict that it’s about to happen again and that fighting among themselves will cost them the future they once fought together to save. This opening volume in a projected trilogy is about the breaking of their world, as the prophecies turn out to be self-fulfilling and the ends are proven once again not to justify the means. Three old friends fight the darkness, while one refuses to see that she has come to embody it. As everyone chooses sides, evil is loosed upon their world.