A practical witch must sabotage her beloved son's ascension to the throne in order to keep the kingdom from ruin, in this delightful cozy fantasy from the author of The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry.

Once upon a time, a somewhat wicked witch named Gretsella lived in a cozy little cottage in the Dark Forest of Brigandale. She dispensed herbs and tinctures at reasonable prices, met with her slightly oddball coven on a regular basis, and had absolutely no need of any further company whatsoever, thank you very much. But then one afternoon, Gretsella came home to find a screaming infant on her doorstep.

Against all her better judgement, she took the baby in. She named him Bradley.

Eighteen years later, Bradley has grown into a bafflingly likable young man under Gretsella’s extremely tolerant—one might even say doting—eye. But the witch’s hopes for an unremarkable yet fulfilling life for her son are shattered when small woodland animals start prophesying that he is the lost prince and should ascend to the throne. Bradley ignores Gretsella’s advice that prophecies and talking chipmunks are to be avoided at all costs, and sets off for the capital. But soon confusion and chaos are reigning, and scheming courtiers are using Bradley for their own ends. Sometimes a witch has to roll up her sleeves and take matters into her own cauldron. So Gretsella sets off to bring about the downfall of her darling son…

My Review:

The witch Gretsella isn’t nearly as black as she would like to be painted. She’s not really wicked, she’s just really, really practical, completely blunt about it, and the field in which she grows her fucks has been barren for decades.

At least until someone deposits a baby on her doorstep right next to the milk. There is a tradition about that, and Gretsella is all about tradition when she wants to be. The rest of the time, she tells tradition to take a hike.

On this particular occasion, she does both. Even though she’s never had any inclination whatsoever for either a baby, an assistant or an apprentice, she takes the little boy into her remote cottage – and into the heart she claims not to have. The knights from the capital, searching for the missing baby princeling…THEM she tells to take a hike. (Actually, she tells their horses to take a hike, and since the knights are all still mounted that takes care of them, too.)

Now that she has acquired a baby and has decided to keep him, tradition dictates that she invite the members of her coven to her hut to give the baby – she’s named him Bradley – the traditional gifts that witches give royal children when they’re not deliberately intending to curse someone.

Unintended consequences may vary, and that’s certainly true of the gifts that her coven gives little Bradley. One wishes him beauty, one wishes him courtesy, while the last and definitely the least traditional wishes for Bradley to have a “powerful right hook.”

From the very beginning, Gretsella wonders which will cause Bradley – and by extension herself – the most difficulties when Bradley grows up, that strong and decisive punch – or the fact that none of the members of her coven wished for Bradley the one thing they all have an abundance – some might say an overabundance of.

No one saw fit to wish Bradley the gift of brains, which turns out to be a HUGE problem when prophecy and the power of story tropes catches up with Bradley the Lost Prince of Evermore.

Bradley is meant to be king. But there’s nothing in Bradley that has been mentored to be a king. When Bradley’s strong desire to please people and make them happy runs headlong into a battalion of knights who have come to take Bradley away to overthrow the evil usurper who has taken his family’s place, Gretsella knows it’s going to be nothing but trouble.

Especially for her, when Bradley finally does the thing he’s best at. When he gets in over his head – and he is very, very far over it as King of Evermore – he calls his mother to come and rescue him.

Just not in the way that anyone in Evermore ever imagined.

Escape Rating A-: The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale is an even cozier fantasy than the author’s The Village Library Demon Hunting Society, which was the reason I picked this up in the first place.

After all, Gretsella and her coven are only ‘somewhat’ wicked, whereas the demon under tiny Winesap is not only wicked, they’re bored out of everyone in the entire town’s minds, and that’s a dangerous combination for pretty much everybody around – especially all the miscellaneous murder victims.

Gretsella’s ‘wickedness’, somewhat or completely, is very much in the eye of the beholder – rather like the villainy of the Queens of Villainy in Wooing the Witch Queen. Gretsella’s wickedness is mostly about getting her own way and making sure that she continues to do so.

(Gretsella and her coven remind me a LOT of the rather eclectic traveling party in T. Kingfisher’s Nettle and Bone. If you loved that or any of her other cozy-ish fantasies, Gretsella’s voice is very similar. Including the snark.)

Gretsella’s so-called wickedness is a pretense that she’s hanging onto with both hands, because she’s not in the least bit wicked where her son Bradley is concerned. Even if she can’t admit either how much she loves him or how much she misses him when he heads to the capital.

She’s eager to go help him out, she’s just been waiting for the invitation. Because Bradley isn’t stupid, he’s just overwhelmed. It’s not really about intelligence, it’s about training and aptitude. He doesn’t know how to be king because he’s never had to work his way through the hard stuff and doesn’t know where to begin.

The charm of the story is all in what happens once she gets there. Because she knows her son as much as she loves him, and she knows he doesn’t really want to be king. He wants the people to be taken care of, but it’s not the job or the life he wants. So his mother has to figure out a way to get him out of the pickle that his courtesy has gotten him into.

That the solution turns out to be a combination of politics and witchcraft and some very witchy shenanigans with political aspirations was utterly delightful, wryly sarcastic and surprisingly effective while inspiring both rueful chuckles and the occasional belly laugh.

It’s brilliant, it’s clever, and the cursing at the end is absolutely inspired.

The way this story works doesn’t quite follow the cozy fantasy mold (this isn’t itself a romance but one or two romances do occur), but it follows it enough – and with enough delightful asides and twists, to remind the reader not only of Kingfisher but with just the right touch of those Queens of Villainy and Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore. So if you enjoyed any of those and don’t mind a cozy fantasy where the romance is a tertiary plot point rather than even a secondary one, The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale is rather wickedly charming.