THE WITCH OF MARACOOR

Following a confrontation with her reclusive great-grandfather, the onetime Wizard of Oz, Rainary Ko, the granddaughter of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West, has re-upped in a mission to settle a few scores and right a wrong or two. Her memory and her passions reviving, Rain turns her gaze back to her native Oz. While the Grimmerie, which she had cast into the sea, retains its arcane power over her, the lover she left behind in Oz proves no less haunting. Once bewitched, twice bewitching, Rain Ko must consider how to achieve a life less suffused with grief than the one she is enduring. Traveling such a distance is not without its perils to a young person more or less alone in a strange land. And, by now, Rain has debts to repay. To make good on promises, she must insist on a layover on an island emptied of its human population by a deadly plague. Revived there by love or magic (and is there a difference?), she sustains an assault on the high seas by pirates. The accumulation of her experience awakens within her a certain nascent knowledge and power, which prepares her finally to touch down upon the far shores of Oz and address her own doubts and hesitations. Traveling companions and arrivistes can befuddle a young witch coming into her own. In her fast-paced and stately progress, Rain may remind readers of the courage it takes to accept one's full identity, unbridled and unruly though it may be. The Witch of Maracoor delivers on the promises of its predecessors, The Brides of Maracoor and The Oracle of Maracoor, and concludes the epic tale of Rain's castaway life with nothing less than enchantment.