Short and Sweet WTF

Today I want to review another book by Aurora Kane, this time in a more narrative style than my previous review of Herbal Magic.

Whether or not you’ll consider this a “good” book depends very much on the metric youre using. It’s definitely a fun, enchanting read if you just want to enjoy some magic aesthetic. For those looking for a real reference / source of mythology: this isn’t it. It is poorly researched and documented, and there’s some information entirely inconsistent with established sources of fairy lore, such as the work of Andrew Lang. Its handling of non Western mythology is distinctly colonial – not uncommon in the New Age genre, but still a disappointment. And at the end of the day, the content is charming nonsense.

This review probably makes it sound like I hated this book, but I actually enjoyed it a lot and found parts of it very insightful. However, that can easily be explained by the principle of “even a stopped clock is right two times a day” – objectively, the book has deficits that can’t (and shouldn’t) be ignored.