Darkwitch Rising: Cornelia rising

Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

The setting is Restoration London. Cornelia, Brutus, Coel, Genvissa, Asterion, and assorted friends and enemies are walking the earth yet again, as is a mysterious new character who has the potential to throw a wrench in all of their best-laid plans.

This is Cornelia’s story more than anyone else’s, as she matures further. Noah, as she is called in this life, is a far cry from the bratty Cornelia of Hades’ Daughter, and even the staunchly loyal Caela of Gods’ Concubine. Here, Noah begins to question everything she had previously accepted, including the Troy Game and her love for Brutus. At first, she begins to teeter into Mary Sue-ness. She is becoming ever more powerful, and it seems like everybody in the entire world is in love with her. But she really wins my heart around the middle of the book, when she begins to break free of the things everyone expects her to do and choose for herself. She makes a shocking choice-one that could destroy many lives, or redeem them. I am really beginning to like this character-and I’m getting quite sick of Brutus. It almost seemed in Gods’ Concubine that he might become a decent man after all, but his issues really come back in Darkwitch Rising. I’m sort of hoping Cornelia/Caela/Noah kicks him to the curb in the next book.

What didn’t work for me: How to say this without spoilers? About halfway through the book, Sara Douglass throws a twist into the plot. Two characters turn out to be the reincarnations of different characters than the reader previously believed. This switch didn’t work for me. There were a few sentences that foreshadowed it, but overall, I think the two characters acted much more like the people I had assumed them to be.