The Year of the Witching Review – Faith, Power, and Forbidden Forests

Source: FantasticFiction

The woods have always been dangerous. In folklore, forests are where witches wait, monsters lurk, and forbidden truths whisper between the trees. They are places of transformation — where children get lost, where heroes are tested, where societies push away what they fear most.

Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching takes this tradition and drenches it in gothic dread. At its centre is Immanuelle Moore, a girl born into a puritanical community where her very existence is a mark of shame. Yet when she enters the forbidden Darkwood, she discovers secrets about her mother, a cursed prophecy, and the power she carries within herself.

In this The Year of the Witching review, we’ll step into Henderson’s world of prophecy, blood, and forbidden woods to explore its gothic atmosphere, feminist themes, and how it resonates with stories of witchcraft and power in other cultures — including the African gothic inspirations behind my own novel, The Girl Who Knew The Medicine.

Would you dare to step into the woods, knowing they might change you forever?

The Story Behind the Woods

Immanuelle Moore is no stranger to being an outsider. As the daughter of a woman who broke her community’s strict rules, she grows up under constant suspicion in Bethel — a rigid theocracy where faith is law, women are subservient, and punishment is never far away.

When Immanuelle strays into the forbidden Darkwood, she encounters the ghosts of four legendary witches. These spectral women pass onto her a cursed prophecy — one that entwines her fate with the survival (or destruction) of Bethel itself.

From here, Henderson unspools a tale of revelation and rebellion. Immanuelle must navigate the suffocating piety of Bethel while grappling with her own emerging power. Her journey is one of dualities: faith versus doubt, duty versus desire, and sacred calling versus cursed inheritance.

The Darkwood itself is more than a backdrop. Like all great gothic settings, it functions as a character — alive, watchful, and brimming with secrets. It is both terrifying and liberating, offering Immanuelle knowledge her society has denied her but at the cost of becoming the very thing they fear most: a witch.

The heart of Henderson’s novel lies in this tension. What happens when the power a community fears becomes the only power that can save it?

Faith, Fear, and Control

At its core, The Year of the Witching is a novel about control — who has it, who loses it, and how belief systems enforce it. Bethel is ruled by prophets who claim divine authority. Their sermons preach obedience and purity, but beneath the surface lies hypocrisy, exploitation, and the abuse of power.

For Immanuelle, faith is not just a spiritual question but a matter of survival. Her community defines her as cursed because of her mother’s transgressions. Every glance, every whisper reinforces her otherness. This echoes the history of European witch trials, where women — particularly outsiders, widows, or the poor — were scapegoated and condemned as witches not for what they did, but for who they were.

But Henderson doesn’t stop at reworking European witchcraft tropes. Through the Darkwood and the ancestral weight of the witches’ prophecy, she taps into a universal truth: communities often decide who holds power, and that decision is rooted in fear as much as faith.

This resonates strongly with African contexts. In Nguni traditions, witchcraft (ukuthakatha) is defined not by accusation but by intent. A witch (umthakathi) deliberately seeks to harm, twisting the sacred practices of divination (ubungoma) into destructive sorcery.

Communities live in fear of these figures not because of rumours but because of their believed ability to cause real misfortune.

Henderson’s Bethel exists at the crossroads of these ideas. Like Europe, it scapegoats women as witches. Like African traditions, it recognises that power — real or imagined — can shape destiny and destroy lives. In both, fear becomes the ultimate tool of control.

Gothic Feminism and the Witch’s Burden

This wouldn’t be a The Year of the Witching review without talking about its feminism.

Henderson crafts a world where women’s bodies are controlled, their choices dictated, and their power feared. Immanuelle’s journey is not only about discovering her heritage but about claiming agency in a world that denies it to her.

The gothic has always been fertile ground for feminist horror. From the “madwomen in the attic” of Victorian novels to modern reimaginings of witchcraft, the genre thrives on stories where women’s power is both desired and demonised. Henderson continues this tradition, giving us a protagonist who must shoulder the burden of inherited trauma while carving her own path.

The four witches in the Darkwood embody this feminist rage. They are figures of both fear and empowerment, haunting Bethel as reminders of the costs of oppression. Through them, Henderson asks: what happens when the women a society tries to bury rise up instead?

This theme resonates deeply with my own novel, The Girl Who Knew The Medicine. My protagonist, like Immanuelle, is a young woman marked by suspicion in a conservative community. Her story is about the tension between sacred calling and destructive labelling, between being chosen and being cursed. Both novels highlight how women’s power — spiritual, ancestral, or otherwise — becomes a battleground for societal anxieties.

The Year of the Witching as Gothic Horror

Henderson’s novel is steeped in gothic horror, borrowing its tropes and reimagining them for a modern audience.

• Isolation: Immanuelle is an outcast in her community, and her journey through the Darkwood heightens her solitude.

• Forbidden Spaces: The Darkwood functions like the haunted castles of classic gothic tales — a place of danger and revelation.

• Decay and Corruption: Bethel’s rigid faith is rotting from within, its prophets corrupted by the very sins they condemn.

• Prophecy and Doom: The cursed legacy Immanuelle inherits mirrors the gothic fascination with inherited trauma and destiny.

Henderson’s prose captures all the lush atmosphere readers crave in gothic horror — eerie landscapes, shadowed rituals, and creeping dread — while grounding it in themes of oppression and resistance. The novel is not just about surviving monsters but about surviving systems that label people as monstrous.

Character Analysis: Immanuelle and Her Burden

Immanuelle Moore is a rare protagonist in horror — deeply human, achingly flawed, yet undeniably powerful. Her outsider status makes her vulnerable, but it also positions her to see the cracks in Bethel’s façade. She doesn’t seek greatness; it’s thrust upon her. Her strength lies not in perfection but in persistence.

The prophecy she inherits becomes both curse and calling. This duality mirrors the experiences of many heroines in feminist and gothic horror: power comes at a cost, and agency is always shadowed by expectation.

The witches of the Darkwood, too, deserve mention. Though spectral, they embody a different kind of legacy — women who were condemned, silenced, and erased, but who linger as both warning and weapon. Their presence forces Immanuelle to confront not only her destiny but her community’s history of violence.

The Year of the Witching Review: Why You Should Read It

If you’re drawn to horror that is as thought-provoking as it is unsettling, The Year of the Witching belongs on your shelf. Alexis Henderson crafts a story that is lushly gothic while fiercely critical of systems of power.

It is a book about faith, but also about doubt. About inheritance, but also about choice. About what it means to carry the burdens of history — and what it costs to break free of them.

For fans of dark fantasy, feminist horror, and gothic tales, this novel delivers everything: cursed woods, forbidden rituals, and a heroine who refuses to be defined by the fears of others.

And for readers of The Girl Who Knew The Medicine, it offers a fascinating companion. Where Henderson explores puritanical America through gothic horror, my novel explores South Africa through African gothic — different landscapes, same questions: Who holds power? Who decides what is sacred, and what is cursed?

Conclusion: Dare to Step Into the Woods?

As this The Year of the Witching review comes to a close, one question lingers: would you dare to step into the forbidden woods?

For Immanuelle, the choice is unavoidable. The Darkwood calls her, binds her, and ultimately reshapes her. For us, the woods represent something broader — the fears societies bury, the power they suppress, and the stories they tell to keep control.

Henderson’s novel reminds us that witches are never just figures of fantasy. They are reflections of cultural anxieties, scapegoats for what communities cannot face, and symbols of the power that terrifies those who seek to control it.

In The Girl Who Knew The Medicine, those same fears are alive — not in gothic woods, but in classrooms, churches, and whispered community stories. Both novels show us that whether through prophecy or ancestral calling, witchcraft remains one of the most haunting mirrors of power and fear.

So I’ll leave you with this: the woods are waiting. The question is whether you’ll step inside.