Witch Crag by Kate Cann

Pages - 376

Published by Scholastic in October 2012

Kita crawled the last stretch of the bramble tunnel on her stomach to protect her face and hands from thorns. Then she wriggled out on to the flint ledge and gazed down at the grasslands that sloped away below. 

Nada's funeral procession had just emerged from the greater outer gates of the hill fort. Two men carried the flimsy stretcher with the old woman's body on it; two boys who had opened the heavy wooden gates and who now ran back in an arc to close them again, followed behind. 

Goodreads Summary

In a tribe where basic survival is the only priority, Kita must make a choice: to accept arranged marriages and being treated with less value than sheep, or escape and journey to the place that even the strongest men fear with their lives — Witch Crag.

But a common threat is facing the witches and sheepmen alike. The tribes must somehow overcome their prejudices and join together if they are to win a war that threatens to destroy everything they hold as good.

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For some reason I was expecting this to be really scary, but it wasn't at all. This  was my first Kate Cann novel and I had been led to believe that she wrote frightening books yet this wasn't like that at all. This book was a beautifully written dystopian/fantasy which was reminiscent of the Mad Max films. The world building was fantastic and I found it very easy to immerse myself in the segregated world the author had created. The book follows the journey of Kita, who knows in her heart that there is more to life outside of the gates. Just as should be, she values her life and her own importance and can see the potential of her future, should she escape. At first she is disgusted by Arc, the cocky and arrogant foot soldier, destined to one day lead the sheep people. He treats her like a sexual prize to be had and fears his insistence to mate. When it looks as though she will lose her friend, Quainty, who is to be married off to the horseman, she is quick to put their escape into action. 
Now you're probably thinking that Arc must be a real jerk, and for the first half of the book, I would totally agree with you, but as situations develop and events unfold, Arc changes dramatically. He grows up very quickly, realising that the old ways of life are becoming archaic and dramatic change is needed for their village to survive. I went from hating him to loving him by the end of the book and from what I can gather that was the author's intention.  Kita grows dramatically in this book too;  in the early chapters she appears quite innocent and timid, but as her powers grow she becomes a force to be reckoned with and is soon valued highly by  her peers.
The women were treated really badly in this book. They were seen as being lower than even the sheep they cared for and at times I found myself frustrated by this.  Women were treated like cattle, used for mating and slave labour. Children were born out of necessity and existed without ever knowing of the existence of love. The witches were feared by the other villagers mainly because of lack of knowledge on their behalf. It took time for everyone to learn the truth about Witch Crag.  
The segregated villages were stifling to read about. Each male dominated village seemed to run under a dictatorship and the only one worth living in was the one they feared most of all. 
This book was a really interesting read and one that flowed with ease; I found it extremely easy to read and I was soon lost in the story. I loved learning more about the ways of the witch, a subject that always attracts my interest.
My only niggle  with the book was the ending which I felt told us what would happen rather than actually showing us. It all felt a little rushed and personally I would have liked to have seen an epilogue set in the near future, showing how life had changed and how each society had embraced the new regime. 
Apart from that I loved it and I look forward to reading all the republished books by this author. 

Halloween by Kate Cann

As part of the Witch Crag blog tour, I am pleased to have Kate Cann on today talking about Halloween!

Don’t let anyone tell you that Halloween is a commercial American import. It’s an ancient pagan Celtic festival - it used to be called Samhain - and it was a season, not just a night, celebrated over the last couple of weeks of October. It was a time of getting ready for winter; preparing food for storage; gathering in the animals. Feasts would be held and bonfires lit. It was a time when the veil between the spirit world and ours was believed to be at its thinnest, when ghosts would appear, and runes of the future could be read.

Trick-or-treating existed then, too. Punkies - swede or turnip lanterns - would be set about in trees and hung on gates to scare away evil spirits. Dressing up in weird costumes and rags and smearing soot on your face would confuse anything wicked out to get you. And in this disguise, you went from door to door, threatening mild harm such as hiding a cow or chaining up the gates - unless you were given a treat.

The Christian church created All Hallows’ Day on November 1st in an attempt to pull Samhain’s pagan teeth: the idea was that evil witches and ghouls had a last hurrah before that most holy of days. The church nearly succeeded: back in the 1960s, when I was a child, Halloween had disappeared from middle England. Then my family moved to Scotland, where Halloween still clung on. It had been dwindled down, tidied up, it was decidedly well behaved - but it was still there.

There’s something wonderful and elemental about the way those faint shreds of Halloween survived on the edges of Britain. My imagination thrilled to it all.

Absolutely nothing to do with Halloween was for sale except for black cardboard witches’ hats at Woolworths. I adored them. They had crepe-paper frills and a little gold scrap of a broom-riding witch on the front. Turnip lanterns were laboriously carved, and the children went “guising”. You dressed up, “dis-guised” yourself, and went politely from door to door with your friends, reciting a poem or singing a song for sweets or money.

Nineteenth-century European immigrants took Halloween to America. Then in the 1980s, a rip-roaring, trick-or-treating, grinning-pumpkin tide started to flow back across the Atlantic again. Thank you, America, for revitalizing Halloween and sending it back to us! Nowadays, it’s our form of carnival.

I’m still in thrall to Halloween. The recklessness, the risk, the thrill and the fear - dressing up and going wild and behaving badly for a night. Autumn, and the death and rebirth of nature. Bright falling leaves, owls hooting, bats flying, bonfires at dusk. Scarecrows, ghost stories, candles and longing to see a witch fly past the full moon. They do say there’s no true light without the dark.

Kate’s blog tour continues tomorrow at www.feelingfictional.com

Find out more about Kate www.facebook.com/authorKateCann

  Three other books by Kate Cann are being republished at the same time and have been given these gorgeous new covers. Aren't they gorgeous! All avaialable to buy now.